Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 268 - The Dark History of Nursery Rhymes

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

Who put the rock-a-bye-baby up in the tree branch, and why? Seems irresponsible. When it was raining and pouring, why didn't the old man get out of bed after bumping his head? Did he die? What is Ring Around the Rosie really about? The bubonic plague? Why are we singing to small children about cutting the tails off of three blind mice? Who wrote all the strange, often dark, mostly weird old nursery rhymes kids have been memorizing for centuries? We look into all of this and more today. Such a fun topic! We examine why nursery rhymes often appear dark and why that may have helped keep them popular. We look into the lore that surrounds a lot of popular old rhymes to try to separate origin fact from origin fiction. Comedic theory, mnemonic devices such as acoustic encoding, and more - all explored as I get both scientific and silly today, finally getting to know many classic nursery rhymes many of us have memorized but few actually understand. If you like to donate to the Bad Magic Giving Tree this year, please to amazon.com, purchase a gift card, and when you fill in the box for "To", enter the following email address: [e-mail] If you'd like to be the recipient of a donation, please email us why you could use a helping hand to get presents for your children this holiday season. You can ask to remain anonymous. Email us at [e-mail] Hail Nimrod!Watch the Suck on YouTube:  https://youtu.be/0faNktF19vAMerch - https://badmagicmerch.com/  Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :)For all merch related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 10,000 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcastSign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits.

It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snowing. He went to bed and bumped his head and didn't get up in the morning. You remember that one? I do. Originally published in 1912 in the nursery rhyme collection, the little mother goose, who wrote it? Who knows? With so many of these nursery rhymes, we just don't know. We don't know how long it had been passed around before it made it into print either.

A lot of mystery ahead today. had been passed around before it made it into print either. A lot of mystery ahead today. Ever think about what that rhyme is really saying? Never a pretty good idea with this one because if you really think about it, pretty straightforward. The old man is dead. He's old, he had a head wound, and he doesn't wake up.

What a fun rhyme for children to memorize. Somebody classic nursery rhymes that I definitely grew up with are pretty damn dark. And if you grew up in the US or the UK or a Commonwealth nation like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, et cetera, you also probably grew up with them. And the world of entertainment, including children's literature, taking things associated with purity, happiness, and joy, and warping, and twisting them into something more sinister, often for humor, sometimes referred to as subverted innocence.

It's been a popular trope and entertainment for a long time. And it still is. Think about Tom and Jerry, Renan Stimpy, South Park, family guy, so many other community cartoons, full of violence into gravity, marketed to the young for the most part. Some of the darkness and nursery rhymes can perhaps be explained by this concept, but not all of it.

Most of today's classic Western nursery rhymes come from medieval England. They're often dark and bloody. Of course they are. Medieval England was often dark and bloody. Lots of heads were getting lopped off. A lot of people getting burned to the stake and talking about the monarchy responsible for a lot of this darkness and violence was a great way to meet a violent end yourself. But it's so hard not to talk about tragedies and atrocities occurring around us, isn't it? And so hard not to talk about tragedies and atrocities occurring around us, isn't it? And so hard not to critique and gossip, whoever's in charge always has been.

The more depraved and salacious to tail, the harder it is to not share it. One way medieval, almost always the literate peasants did share dark stories, critiquing their cruel masters is thought to have been through nursery rhymes. And that explains the origins of some nursery rhymes, but not all of them. Sometimes nursery rhyme associations with actual historical figures and tragedy, just a product of imaginative folklorists

and conspiracists who wanted to be there to be fire or they saw smoke. Today, we're gonna try and figure out which popular rhymes truly have dark origins and which ones are just well, fucking weird. With the catchy rhymes and syncopation, not to mention talking animals and fantastic events, these are the kind of stories that are really stuck with many of us. I predict a fair amount of, oh yeah, I remember that one.

On today's, I'm sorry, what was that? Oh shit, that is dark. Nursery rhyme, folklore, I'm so glad I live in an age of comparatively few people getting their heads cut off and being burned alive edition of Time Suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck, you're listening to Time Suck. Happy Monday, meat sacks. Welcome or welcome back to the Cult of Curious. Hope your Halloween was fantastic. Happy Monday, meat sacks. Welcome her. Welcome back to the cult of curious.

Hope your Halloween was fantastic. Thanks to those of you who popped into the scared and death live show we did. And true tales of Hallows Eve horror. So fun. I was really happy with that. I'm Dan Cummins, a master sucker, suck nasty, fucked up nursery rhyme historian, archivist, and you are listening to time suck. He'll name out of Halo, Savannah praise both jangles and put a little extra sing song in our

hearts today triple M head into Cincinnati for four standup shows this weekend. I think two of them are already sold out. So thank you. That'll be just outside of Seattle and Arlington right after that. That show been sold out for a while. Denver in Loveland coming up next, then Tampa and then Tacoma, those of you in the Seattle area who wanted to go to the show in Arlington and couldn't make it. And then again, announcing spring 2022 dates very soon, having a lot of fun conceptualizing

this new, new hour. Important announcement about this year's Bad Magic Giving Tree. This year marks a third annual Bad Magic Giving Tree. Over the last three years, we've taken what would be the December Bad Magic donation for a charity and given it back to members of our bad magic family. Last year, Lindsey and I offered to match the total amount donated by you, amazing meat sex, which was over 18,000. That plus our matching amounts plus the 11,000 from time sucks patron, allowed to suspend over 47,000 on a holiday gifts for the children of bad magic families. Hail Nimrod, looking to do it again this year. We estimate we'll be donating over 16,000 on a holiday gift for the children of bad magic families. Hale, Nimrod, looking to do it again this year.

We estimate we'll be donating over $16,000 from Patreon, plus Lenzhenai will match up to 15K. You've fully matched it's at least $46K. I have a feeling it's going to end up being closer to $50,000. The average donation last year was approximately $50. All of it went to helping bad magic families have a better holiday. If you'd like to donate, we're simplifying it this year. Just go to Amazon.com, purchase a gift card, and when you fill in the box for two, enter

the email address, giving tree, one word, giving tree at badmagicproductions.com. Lindsey and I will be tracking the donations as they come in. We'll update you on the progress. If you want to be the recipient, you have to have kids. If you do, and you want to help give them a better holiday than your budget currently allows for, email us with your story at GivingTree at BadMagicProductions.com. We'll gather all the names of those who need help, pick it random as many families as we can

until the money runs out, accepting nominations from now until November 16th. At that time, the names will be entered into the GivingTree hat. We'll notify only the recipients, ASAP, to explain how they will receive their donations. Help us help some of you make your Christmas, Hanukkah, whatever other holiday you're celebrating one for the ages. We'll be sharing updates.

We have them on how much money we have, you know, how many families we're helping. So fuck yeah, bro. I think I got to punctuate that with some air banjo jingle bells. Brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang,

brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brinco dang, brin sweatpants while you're admiring this one or if you lady boner owners might not want to wear spandex. No panties. That tugboat captain gonna be standing up straight. Seriously, it's a fun tea. Pinup art is just so fun to me. Maybe saying this just means I'm old now, but leaving some of the clothes on comes across the sexier than all of it off. It's a mystery, mischievousness with those

pinup models. And that's it. Enough announcements, meets,. Hickory, dickory dock. It's dark nursery rhyme of clock. Don't be a cock. Playboy, buck, buck. Let's dive into a lot of learning mixed with a little bit of shock. Plagues, tyrants, medieval taxes, torture, ritual sacrifice, animal cruelty, murder by decapitation, fire, you know, being buried alive, all speculated, at least to be details and or the subject matter of various nursery rhymes. Nursery rhymes written for an audience of children. Supposedly, maybe not only children, no, babies falling from trees, heads being chopped

off and central London children being sacrificed for the sake of sound infrastructure. Why were these types of topics possibly deemed appropriate to teach children, packaging cute little rhymes, starting most likely sometime in the 14th century? It's a day to break down nursery rhymes, their history, importance, and possible dark origin stories. I'm going to first explain how they're structured. Next I'll explain why many are thought to have secret meanings and also why it's hard to conclusively prove what those meanings may be. Then after wondering how long they've been around, I'll examine

what motivation medieval authors might have had to sneak dark adult messages into children's stories. And how simple rhyming verses may have helped a largely illiterate population. Remember these stories through these rhymes. We're looking to how many parents have found nursery rhymes to be controversial for centuries. Then I'll explain why they have survived for centuries. Hint, kids just like you and me tend to enjoy some fucked up humor. Next, I'm going to explain how while nursery rhymes might be darker than a lot of parents are comfortable with, they definitely are extremely beneficial to young developing minds.

They prepare our brains for speaking, understanding, and writing much more complex language later on. They helped train our memories for being able to store and expand vocabulary later on. There's a reason so many of us know all these nursery rhymes. They do their linguistic enhancing jobs very well. Finally, before our timeline today, I'll share why some old nursery rhymes have been altered or even removed from the list of commonly told children's tales. The world wasn't nearly as evolved a few hundreds years ago. Of course, as it is now, and there's just no good reason to keep

telling some of these old tales. And then at the timeline, we'll go over when a number of popular fairy tales first showed up, what dark meanings they may have, who might have wrote them, and it'll be fun just to recite some of these because they're absurd and share some modern versions that people have been having fun with online. Now, after breaking down numerous popular rhymes like Humpty Dumpty, Patakake, Patakake, Baker's Man, Ring Around the Rosie, Jack and Jill and more, and cover in some history, like the story of Bloody Mary and the London Bridges to help understand some of these old nursery rhymes will hop out of the timeline and examine some seriously fucked up children's classics from Russia.

Of course, Russia, ah, it's gonna be good. It's gonna be good. Brazil and more. A lot of interesting ground to cover today. I hope you enjoyed learning about a lot of these rhymes. You probably like me memorized this, children, but never really understood why or what the rhymes meant.

Isn't it funny how we do that? As kids, often as adults, we learn so many things that we never really actually understand. We memorize the rhymes or we read the books, but we don't step back and wonder why am I memorizing this? What is this thing I'm memorizing? Why am I reading this? Why is it important? What am I really learning? Today you motherfuckers are gonna learn lots. I'm guessing. I sure as hell did. Let's get started. First up let's familiarize ourselves with the structure of nursery rhymes looking to why they've been told for generations Structure of nursery rhymes, you know very basic and simplistic

They've been told for generations because toddlers have been really fucking stupid for a long time stupid fucking babies Gosh dang, that's not accurate Not entirely Nursery rhymes are essentially a small but popular subgenre of children's literature. They want to several ways to tell a kid's story, similar to fables, fairy tales, myths, tall tales, folk tales, legends. Nursery rhyme is defined as a short traditional verse or song for children like Humpty Dumpty or Hickory Dickory Duck.

Nursery rhymes typically have a simple structure, often only a verse or two in length. Sometimes very short. They tend to combine elements from fables, as I said, myths and legends as well as subject matter ranging from fantasy to harsh reality. And they've been told for generations for a variety of reasons. They're a great primer for speaking and understanding language and story structure. Many of them have helped to keep various historical moments alive as well. Nursery rhymes have often been used help her remember these historical moments. This element is one of what we really explored today. How subversive many of them were

when it came to helping current and future generations like not forget something. It will be dangerous to talk about openly. Also like fables, many of if not most come complete with a moral lesson. Cultural teaching tools to instruct children how their how their parents church church, king, culture, or subculture wants them to behave mostly. Some to be honest, just seem like some nonsense. And as a catcher rhyme structure, and it's some fun shit to say, not all nursery rhymes seem to have secret meanings.

Excuse me, some do some don't. Hard to tell which ones for sure do, and what exactly that secret and or subversive or dark meaning might be, because we rarely know who wrote them. Most nursery rhymes do not have known authors. Almost all of them don't have known authors. Did you already know that? I did not. I was surprised by that.

The lyrics were often spoken or sung aloud, you know, past between parents, nurses, and children, for who knows how long before being put to paper and published. In some cases, you know, the original telling may go back decades or even centuries before finally being written down. I think part of our collective interest in nursery rhymes may lie in the mystery that's around them. I would like a mystery. It's like some of them just come from the void or like they've just always been there

somehow floating around just magic. I think about how maybe in some cases some random meat sack hundreds of years ago just came up with some rhyming verses here. She just thought sounded cool. Maybe they were fucking around in the loot inside their thatched roof cottage and some old shitty medieval village in Jolly Old England. It really wasn't that jolly. They sang a recited something to their kids or nieces or nephews or something. They're like, hey, this is actually pretty clever. That's catchy. And then maybe the first kids who heard it, spread it around a bit, other relatives and people on the neighborhood and just kept spreading.

Maybe mutates a little bit, eventually gets printed in some book and published thousands of top millions of times over. And now centuries later, it's still here. Now, little kids 20, 30 generations later, still memorizing it. That's pretty cool. That's some serious stain power.

It's like nursery rhymes or early viral videos or memes that are still getting clicks. Popularity is still pretty strong. Kids today continue to learn about Humpty Dumpty, London Bridges, Ring Around the Rosey and more. That is so weird if you really think about it. This all makes me think about the recent popularity of the hit Netflix series, South Korea's Squid Game.

I got swept up in the trendiness. And I watched it too. I liked it. I liked it subtitles and all. The children's games used to move the plot of that show or used to move the plot of that show forward. I'm not going to spoil it for you. Or for the most part, real children's games or games based on something real, including the namesake Squid Game.

And no one knows who the hell came up with that game originally or why. But a lot of people remember playing as a kid in the 70s and 80s. And I've had a lot of kids we've played it again now. It's thought to originate in South Korea in the 70s, but again, no one knows for sure true origins or mystery, just like the true origins of so many nursery rhymes. How long have these mysteries been around? Who the hell knows? The ancient Samarians could have been telling their kids some form of a nursery rhyme, you know, thousands of years ago in Mesopotamia. The oldest recorded nursery rhyme in the English language is a little diddy called ding dong bell, published first in 1580. There's nursery rhyme and some other language that was published first. We couldn't find it. My US and English-based internet search engines just kept landing on ding dong bell. We'll examine that

nursery rhyme here soon early in the timeline. English nursery rhymes are the ones we're folks on here today. There are many others we will not look at. There is no human culture that has not invented some form of language games for the kids. Now let's look a bit further into why these rhymes

were ever told in the first place, why they continue to be told. The real messages of a lot of these nursery rhymes are often dark, why were they told to children? until the last century or so. Actually, it was common for parents to truly hate their kids. I didn't really actually read specifically about that. Anyone who has kids, I mean, does know how fucking annoying they can be and how much fun it can be to take out some frustration with them by, you know, scaring them from time to time. And because kids inherently instinctively want to trust their parents and typically see

their parents as their guides to life, they're often the easiest target in a parent's life when it comes to someone who can really, really scare their hell out of you. You know, with the right story, especially if you don't tell them that you're kidding. And back in the days when it was socially acceptable to hit kids with a stick and smack them in the face and stuff, it was also acceptable expected even to psychologically torture and or mentally scar them forever to make sure they didn't grow up, you know, weak and whiny. And parents in the UK, originators and all likelihood of today's nursery rhymes took out their hatred of their kids, partially through these rhymes, often told us they were

going to bed in the hopes that it would give them nightmares. And then if the kids woke up screaming from these nightmares, you know, they'd have another good excuse just to fucking beat the shit out of them in the middle of the night. And that was a lot of fun for them. JK, come on now. Apparently it was very different 100 plus years ago. Maybe not that different. Now why are we still to kids? One reason is remembrance. I touched on already.

Certain somewhat dark messages where sometimes snuck into nursery rhymes to help, people remember tragic moments from the past. Kind of like how the phrase never forget, keeps the memory of the 9-11 terrorist attacks of 2001 alive in the minds of many Americans, certain rhymes kept other moments, often tragic, alive in the minds of various generations of medieval people living in the UK. Also, they had to be sneaky when trying to teach future kids

about the taboo actions of some ruler, whatever during the days when royalty reigns supreme in Europe, openly poking fun at the King of Queen was not a good way to stay alive and well. So, you had to hide your accusations and complaints. And nursery rhymes provided an effective way to smuggle encoded or thinly veiled messias under the guise of kids' entertainment. Seth Lerer, one of the nation's leading literature scholars, distinguished professor of literature at the University of California, San Diego, says a lot of children's literature has a very dark origin.

Nursery rhymes are part of a long-standing tradition of parody and popular political resistance to high culture and royalty. Also in a largely illiterate society, you couldn't expect people to correctly remember a long description full of a bunch of details. You had to keep the message simple and memorable if you wanted the message to be correctly passed around and kept alive for several generations. And a catchy sing-song melody, right? That helped people remember these stories. People knew intuitively back then

what we know now based on scientific studies that simple rhymes, for sure make it easier to remember a message. A rhyme is one of many effective, namanic devices, learning techniques that aid information retention or retrieval in the human memory for better understanding. Rhymes are easier to remember

because they can be stored via acoustic encoding in our brains. And coding is the first process of memory during which information is transformed so that it can be stored. This is a physiological process which starts with attention. A memorable event causes the neurons to fire more rapidly, organizing the information into a systematic array that can then be recalled later. How we encode information determines how it will be stored, what cues will be effective

when we try to retrieve it. When trying to memorize a poem or nursery rhyme, the brain does not encode each word individually by itself, isolated and alone. It creates patterns of words, making the experience more intense and increasing the likelihood that the event is encoded as a memory. There's four main kinds of encoding, acoustic, visual, tactile, and semantic. If you say something out loud or read something out loud, you're using acoustic encoding. And nurseurimes are meant to be said aloud and also to be repeated. Right? They're often short and sweet, easy to repeat when the

short and sweet. Easy to repeat when the short and sweet. Easy to repeat when the short and sweet. I didn't fucking make that. Custick and coding is further aided by what is known as the phonological loop. Phonological loop is a process by which sounds are then sub-vocally rehearsed, right? You start saying your mind over and over.

Easy to repeat, man, so, man, so, man, so, man, so, man, so, and then it makes it easier for recall. You know, so every man, so every man, so every man, so every man, so every man. And then, you know, it makes it easier for recall. You know, blah, blah, black sheep, have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full, one for the master, one for the dame, and one for the little boy who lives down the lane. I memorized that as a kid. If it wouldn't have rhymed, wouldn't have had a simple pleasing rhythm, you know, a little

bit of a lot harder to memorize, because the way our brains are wired and how they encode memories. Compare that nursery rhyme to a slobbly written short story that essentially conveys the same message. Bob, black sheep, how much world do you have for me today? Three bags full. That's great. That's so much I was hoping for three bags of cool because as you know, I have to give one bag to the king. That's the cost of doing business you get. And I need a second bag of you will to give to this noble lady who also taxes the shit out of us.

And that sucks, but it is what it is. And then I got one for myself, so I guess that's better than none. Ha ha ha. Actually, the original nursery rhyme ended with a nun for the little boy who lives down the lane. So my overly wordy, much harder memorized version would have ended with, and the third bag turns out it's not even fucking full. At all, that's the lie. So it's empty, so I guess I'm fucked. and I'm not gonna eat now because I don't make enough

money because the ganging the touches took off my fucking wall. Not as catchy, you know, much harder to memorize verbatim. Since I used it as an example, here's a little history on the Bob-Bob Blacksheep Prime. That particular rhyme once got banned from UK school districts in the 80s and 90s because it was thought to be very politically incorrect, thought to be very racist. Some parents in the UK complained that their children were being taught a song that had strong illusions to slavery. They thought Black sheep was a reference to African slaves with the wool referencing them being forced to work on farms and that is actually not true. The origins of the nursery rhyme date were for a long time, thought to date back to the

18th century in Britain. At that time, Britain wasn't fact trading slaves to its colonies, but they were not necessarily using these slaves to work farmland in the way we traditionally associated with slavery in the US. And it would have actually been uncommon for slaves in the UK to be handling wool at the time. Most literary experts who studied this rhyme believe that some early version of Bob-Bob Blacksheep actually dates back further in British history than one thought like way further,

all the way back to the 13th century, and to something called the Great Custom. At that time, the wool trade was big in England, and when King Edward I returned from the crusades, he needed extra money to pay for his military expeditions, so he introduced new wool taxes aka the Great Custom, and the master in name in the rhyme likely represent the nobility who are taking a portion of the peasant's wool as taxes. And we look to the original ending and none for the little boy who lives down the lane,

the original intention makes more sense, right? The king of nobility were fucking the poor over, just like they've done for most of human history. And then at some point, the original lyrics were altered to make a more upbeat tale. Everyone gets whoa. Haha, JK about the sad ending. Yay.

That nursery rhyme, like so many others would originally a sneaky way to, for a literate peasants to talk shit about the king and other nobility who are taxing them unfairly. It was a way of recording the terrible deeds of a ruler in a way that didn't get their heads cut off. And in a way that wouldn't soon be forgotten This all makes these old nursery rhymes so much cooler to me right the coded message of the subjugated masses Small rhyming acts of defiance in the face of tyranny

For the longest time I just thought they were away for grandparents to help their grandkids raid to read musician BBC producer and musical historian Jeremy Barlow a specialist in early English popular music further reiterates the subversive importance of many nursery rhymes. Writing about how these cute little rhyme and sing songs, not only help people memorize the messages, they also help distract from the real message. Writing the innocent tunes do not, I'm sorry, the innocent tunes do draw attention away from what's going on in the rhyme. For example, the drowned cat in Ding Dong bell, some of the shorter rhymes, particularly those with nonsense or repetitive words, attract small children even without the tunes.

They like the sound and rhythm of the words. Of course, the tune enhances that attraction, so the words and the tune then become inseparable. And again, I'll share the content that ding dong bell nursery rhyme here soon. Some of these nursery rhymes so controversial. They were controversial in the sense that they often held coded content and also because of some of the imagery and language in them. It was deemed as inappropriate for children.

In the past, just like it's deemed inappropriate by some people today. I check out this fucked up classic. There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children, she didn't know what to do. She gave them some broth without any bread and whipped them all soundly and put them to bed. No one knows for sure what the hell this weird rhyme is about. There are a number of historical figures that might be the old woman and the poem is letting you know that she A has too many kids.

B, she's crazy and C, she's a terrible mother-slash person. It could originate from some forgotten custom. It could be essentially a joke about motherhood or something else entirely, a lot of speculation. Whatever it's possibly hiding or the last meeting is on the surface, it's about some lady, you know, losing her mind and starving and just senselessly beating the shit out of her kids. And just like some parents have a problem

reading that kind of story to their kids today, you know, it's also outraged parents during other points in history. Rhymes like this definitely outraged many Victorians in the 19th century. So much so, in fact, that a bunch of them founded the British Society for Nursery Rhyme Reform. And it took great pains to clean up the lyrics they thought went too far, which was a lot of them.

According to random houses, Max Minkler, as late as 1941, the society was condemning roughly a hundred of the most common nursery rhymes for harboring unsavory elements, including Humpty Dumpty and Three Blind Mice, both of which we'll discuss later. Along list of sins, Minkler notes included referencing poverty. That's a weird thing to be upset about. Fuck every Torrance. Scoring prayer, ridiculing the blind, It also included 21 cases of death, notably choking to capitation, hanging devouring, shriveling and squeezing, plus 12

cases of torment animals. And one case each of consuming human flesh, body snatching and the desire to have one's limbs severed. I wonder what the British society for nursery rhyme reform would have thought the Tom and Jerry cartoons I watch grown up. The ones I watched were written and produced between 1940, 1958 by Hannah Barbera and MGM in the US. And one episode literally called heavenly plus. Fuck yeah, bro. Hey, Luciferina. Not that kind of push actually. And this episode, after being crushed to death by a piano

to start the cartoon, Tom's spirit needs to get past the security guard in heaven. Besides if a dead cat can go to heaven or not, before Tom's turn comes, the guard is distracted by a squishy wet pouch hopping his way towards him. I remember this cartoon. As the rope unties, three little kittens popped their heads out, purr and rushed towards heaven. And then the guard shakes his head and says, what some people won't do. Yay. Someone put three kittens in a sack and threw him in the fucking river to drown comedy Who fuck wrote that cartoon Ed Kemper?

Mother look at the comedy I make First I killed some kiddin's mother then I wrote a comedy about it And another super funny comedy for kids called Year of the Mouse Thomas fucking had it with Jerry's pranks and at gunpoint he makes Jerry a mouse buddy If he's climbing to a bottle he traps them inside and then he boobies traps the bottle in such a way that they try to get out of it. A gun's gonna blow their fucking brains off or brains out. And then Tom, super please himself has a great nap. The end. There is a very similar scenario presented in the movie Saw 2. The old magnum eye hole scene. Tom and Jerry versions comedy,

the saw version is horror. Feel like a lot of nursery rhymes, prep me for my love of Tom and Jerry and similar cartoons, which then prep me for, you know, love a horror movie's later. No hidden messages or morality tales in Tom and Jerry, though, just pure violence.

Which numerous parents have objected to over the years and certain Tom and Jerry cartoons have been pulled off of this platformer that over the years for being too violent. So why were many of these nursery rhymes dark? Because dark subject matter made them popular with kids because kids like a lot of adults often find dark taboo shit funny and why is that?

Why do kids like me at one time, you know, find say the cartoonish violence of a lot of nursery rhymes to be very humorous? Why do I still love it? Let's get into some comedic theory. This is a little detour I loved going down in the research this week. Allow me to do the one thing you're not supposed

to do with humor and that is analyze it. You're ready for a peek behind the curtain to see how some of the comedy sausages made. Numerous studies have actually shown that kids overall perceive violent cartoons to be funnier than non-violent ones. And why? Simple answer is not because it's wrong.

In 2010, in the journey psychological science, A. Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren, both then at the University of Colorado Boulder, proposed a theory for humor they call benign violation. And this is a pretty commonly accepted explanation of most humor now. Let's apply this only to dark, violent humor since this is a talk about dark nursery rhymes and not about humor in general. This theory comes out of an earlier theory known as the theory of incongruity. That theory is that laughter is caused by the perception of something that is incongruous.

Meaning it violates our expectations, our mental patterns. A simple definition for this is laughter is a function of anticipating a different outcome than what was expected. Adding to this is the new benign violation theory or adding to this in the new benign violation theories, of course, a violation. In this more modern human theory, laughter results when a person simultaneously recognizes both that an ethical, social, or physical norm has been violated. What they thought was going to happen did not happen and what happened was inappropriate.

And this violation is not very offensive, reprehensible or upsetting. It's benign. Tom and Jerry, or the characters of an old nursery rhyme, doing something against the norm and fucked up is funny because they're not real people, right? It's fiction, it's ultimately harmless. Jack and Jill, they can fucking,

they can get fucked up on the hill. It's like you don't really care about them because they're cartoons. Jerry the mouse with a gun to his head, pleading for his life, you know, he's not a real creature. He's, uh, he's not alive. He hurting the cartoon mouse is a benign violation. Benign, you know, because it's not real, violation because it goes against a cultural norm to threaten to kill somebody just because you want him to stop pranking you so you can get a nap. A kid might find old mother Hubbard, you know, that nursery rhyme funny, because those pretend kids,

yeah, they don't deserve to be fed less food, you know, they don't deserve to be beaten simply because their mom is exhausted and they're also not real. Hopefully that same kid would not laugh if their parent told him that they're on, had been arrested for starving and actually beating the shit out of their cousins. Because that violation would not be benign,

that would be real and tragic. Okay, some people though, they won't even laugh at the Tom and Jerry, nursery rhyme stuff. That violation to them is not benign. Humor of course is subjective. And some people truly don't seem to have much of a sense of humor.

How much you like to laugh or are wired to laugh, it varies a lot from meat sack to meat sack. The meat sacks who do not laugh at even cartoon violence. So are they just better people than those of us who enjoy a fucked up joke? Those of us who think, well, there's big deal. I just like to rassle. Nope. They are not, but they might be dumber, not JK in here. Get ready to feel superior meat sacks. According to numerous studies including a pretty recent two thousand seventeen study people who appreciate taboo jokes and other forms of black humor gallows humor show higher levels of intelligence than people who do not

show these take off the don't cap and lap up that pain about a back at fuck yeah all the people who've ever uh... told me over the years that they really like clean comedy or that you know the best comics work clean uh... dark and dirty comedy is you know, the best comics were clean. Dark and dirty comedy is, you know, it's cheap and basically cheating and easier to do.

You silly cunts can all go suck a bag of dicks. Choking die or you know, you can just enjoy the kind of comedy you like and I'll keep doing what I do. He'll never. In this 2017 study, researchers at the Medical University of Vienna found that the enjoyment of so called gallows humor is linked to high levels of both verbal and nonverbal intelligence. They also found the participants who appreciated such jokes tended to be less aggressive than those with a more conventional sense of humor.

Don't bottle it up. Don't keep telling yourself you can't laugh at this or that. Fuckin' makes you tense. Get tense enough. You're gonna snap. You're gonna do something crazy. These finding support psychoanalysts, Sigmund Freud's 1905 theory of humor,

which proposes that humor allows for a temporarily and relatively safe release of usually repressed, sexual and aggressive urges in the form of wits. I knew we meet Sacks for the best, I fucking knew it. Okay, now we've covered white nursery rhymes, we're off in dark. White darkness is funny. And it's okay to laugh at some of those old rhymes are dark because real historical tragedies, you know, we're subversibly snuck into children's literature as a way to hide messages and

not get your head lopped off. You could help people remember the bad thing by teaching it, you know, to kids. And because a gallows humor or a dark tale can be appealing to kids on a comedic level. And if kids think something's funny, they're gonna wanna pass it around and that has helped keep these nursery rhymes around. Outside of a laugh, small kids usually don't appreciate the coded part of the messages. Is there any educational value to these nursery rhymes? Yes, a lot, actually. This is, I think, the main reason a lot of old nursery rhymes

have had so much stain power. They help our brains develop, and so we keep saying them under the basic rule of, if it ain I've had so much stain power. They help our brains develop. And so we keep saying them under the basic rule of, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And who doesn't like some tradition as well? A little connection to our past. Let me explain how these things help our brains.

At the core of nursery rhymes is their distinctive sing song meter, tonality and rhythm that characterizes baby talk or mother ease. And this way of speaking has proven evolutionary value. Baby talk is not just some silly bullshit. Yes, it can be super annoying to listen to. But can also help a kid learn.

Research has shown that talking to children and mother ease, who just my little girl, you are, yes you are. This is very helpful when it comes to building a kid's ability to understand and create sentences of their own someday Most of us parents. I've never known a parent not to do this actually use changes in pitch and rhythm when we talk to small children We emphasize important words and simple sounds and these sounds and words are what kids usually learn to then produce first

You know say mama Mama say dadda Dadda those sounds a lot easier for a babies, you know Untrained vocal cords to reproduce than if you were like say apex predator say an apex predator is approaching my crib In apex predator is approaching my crib say there's a fire in the nursery. Oh God. There's a fire in the nursery Come on you stupid fucking baby. I'm trying to prepare you for the real world You need to be able to recognize, assess danger, communicate it. God you fucking dumb shit. You get it. I just can't work. He's been children to read and rhyme early in life. He's beneficial to their development. There are countless studies that show the benefits of reading to

your kids and reading things with simple words. They can actually repeat. It's going to be more beneficial than complex narratives full of top shelf, high for loot and vocabulary words. Thanks to being an effective, namanic device. Thanks for thanks to enhanced memory storage via acoustic encoding in our brains. Nursery rhymes are great language tools for very young kids. Simple rhythm, the rhyme of mother goose, nursery rhymes helps children develop all sorts of language based confidence so they can feel smart and shit. The rhymes boosts their cognitive development, increased their vocabulary, various studies have shown that kids

who learn nursery rhymes early on become better readers shortly thereafter. Nursery rhymes get a lot of kids off the old language starting blocks and the super important race to literacy. If you can read your chance to the financial and social success, increase dramatically, and the better you can read, the easier it is to achieve more overall success. And frankly, happiness due to that success. Money doesn't buy happiness, but a little bit helps you get to a place where you can fucking slow down and be a little happier.

There is evidence, not surprising. The nursery rhymes can also help develop future writers. Some nursery rhymes can also be important for emotional development. Nursery rhyme characters experience many different emotions. This can help children identify their own emotions, understand the real emotions of others. Sharing nursery rhymes can provide a safe and secure bond between parent and child,

rewarding and nurturing shared experience, positive physical touch between a parent and a child or between children, for example, during say clapping rhymes, that's important for social and emotional development. Some educators also believe that nursery rhymes help children learn problem solving skills. One of the rhymes that comes to the mind there is Jack Spratt. Another one will cover later in the timeline.

But for now in this rhyme, Jack and his wife, you know, they have a terrible problem. He doesn't want to eat fat meat. She doesn't want to eat lean meat. So what does one do? Go vegan. Killer, find a much cooler wife. You can enjoy steak with? No. Jack doesn't want to eat lean meat. So what does one do? Go vegan? Killer, find a much cooler wife, you can enjoy steak with, no, Jack doesn't do that. And then they work together to get what they both want and lick their plates clean. There's also evidence that,

you know, some nursery rhymes help develop empathy. Research has shown that empathy is not simply inborn, at least not entirely. Some are born with more of it than others, as long as you're born with at least a little of it. And most of all, if not all, excuse me, meet Saksara, you can be taught to expand your empathy. It's not largely to be a learned behavior. And some simple rhymes are able to get kids to care about the characters and them

and empathize with what they're going through. Beyond empathy, the simple structure of these songs also helps youngsters begin to process, communicate information, training their brains, be able to handle more complex processing, communicating later in life. Some educators even go as far as saying the nursery rhymes help prep young minds for what's known as academic writing. A type of writing that includes book reports, research papers, and more.

And then those skills can be applied out in the real world for various jobs. How? Well, throughout a person's life, many of us who memorize these nursery rhymes, never fully forget them and their simple ideas, and linking these ideas as a structure. For example, let's look at the structure of the tale about Mary and her stupid little lamb. It's just kidding, it's a nice lamb.

Here are the words. Mary had a little lamb, I mean, now why is that melody in my head? Mary had a little lamb whose fleas was wide as snow, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go. It followed her to school one day, which was against the rules. It made the children laugh and play to see a lamb at school.

And so the teacher turned it out, but still it lingered near and waited patiently about till Mary did appear. Why does the lamb love Mary so? The eager children cry? Why Mary loves the lamb you know, the teacher did appear. Why does the Lamb love Mary so? The eager children cry? Why Mary loves the Lamb, you know, the teacher did reply. So very sweet. Nothing dark about that one.

Now check out a structure. It begins with a generic question. What I have. What do I have? In this case, Mary has a lamb that I don't explain. You know, what does it look like? Back to Mary's lamb. It has a snow white fleece.

After that, the formula asks, what is the best thing about it? In this case, it's a loving lamb, loyal to the girl, it follows her everywhere. Finally, the structure ends with a short story or anecdote. And the gripping story of marrying her lamb, the damn thing follows her to school and has an interesting day and that, you know, teaches us less about love.

While that might not sound like much structure, it's similar to the structure of who, what, when, where, why, and how, the professional journalists, researchers, police investigators, et cetera, used to get a full picture of a situation. As people grow from children to adults, they will have already been playing and talking with the same processes that they'll be using later in school and their professions and in citizens, organizing language into chunks to accomplish various objectives. Okay, one last thing before the timeline. You look into old nursery rhymes, and sure enough, a lot of articles come up

about them being pretty racist. And of course, many of them do feature racist elements. It would be more shocking to me if they didn't. The norms of the age they were written in, you know, we're rife with racism. It truly was the way of the world, not condoning it, but also not gonna try and impose 21st century understanding, compassion, and social evolution on a 19th century world

because that doesn't make any sense. I hate, uh, presentism, holding historical figures by today's standards. I think it's a very virtuey, uh, signally dishonest way to look at the past. Still even knowing and understanding all that. Some of the examples of the original lyrics are, uh, other pretty, pretty fucking surprise in a shocking. Take the original version of Old Mother Goose and the Golden Egg. From the 1860s or perhaps even earlier, Mother Goose stories were being printed in some form, at least as far back as 1695. It contains the lines, Jack sold his gold egg to a rogue of a Jew who cheated him out of the half of his due. Yikes! Yes, a bit uncomfortable there.

In this version, the Jewish character goes on to steal and murder the goose, resolving it once his pockets to fill. Why does he do that? Because he's Jewish, I guess. Now, their details are given about him. He's greedy, not afraid to swindle you out of your money. You know, that was obviously a very anti-Semitic stereotype that exists unfortunately to this day.

Obviously, not a good look. Not a good stereotype to push. I'm guessing Hitler was pretty familiar with this, this nursery rhyme. April of 1969, the American Jewish Congress, AJC successfully pressured the Xerox Corporation to withdraw 3,000 reprints of an 1895 edition of Mother Goose. They contained this language. However, despite the AJC's victory, the same anti-Semitic language continues to circulate until 1975, a 1975 Viking press edition of Mother Goose. And that was found in

libraries, at least throughout the 1980s. And for historical purposes and research, you know, it should be kept in libraries. No sense in erasing the past pretending it never happened, but maybe shouldn't be available for quick checkout in the kids section. No fan of book burning, not of literally any book, fuck censorship, but big fan of supervision. Just like young kids shouldn't be checking out hardcore porn or books on how to, you know, turn household chemicals into explosives, maybe they should not be casually checking out old racist rags either. Another shockingly racist old nursery rhyme is five little monkeys, five little monkeys jumping on the bed bed one fell off and bumped his head Mama called the doctor and the doctor said no more monkeys jumping on the bed

And it goes in four monkeys and then three and you know two one you get it With one left the last line changes to put those monkeys right to bed originally Eek the N word used where the word monkey now lies. So that's a real bad look. And readers digest article on racism and nursery rhymes, author Aisa Nefertari Ulen argues that subbing in the word monkeys not only fails to redress the wrongs of the original language, it's also traumatizing in a different, though related way. In the end, using the word monkeys doesn't eliminate racism from the nursery rhyme. It simply reestabishes it.

That's a fair point. Unfortunately, long history of racial overtones with the word monkey. Philip Nell, an English professor at Kansas State University, author of Was the Cat in the Hat Black, the hidden racism of children's literature and the need for diverse books, explains that saying children's literature and culture helps promote the lie of black animal animal. Oh, man, this is the word again that I read. I'm like, yeah, and animality. Then pronounce him like, I don't know.

It's a, it's animal with ITY at the end. Animality by presenting African Americans as apes or monkeys, either via racist caricature or via monkey characters who behave like they imagine African Americans behaved. And there are certainly many other examples of nursery rhyme racism like any mini-mini mo. You probably know how that one starts.

Right, any mini-mini mo. Catch it, tiger by the toe. If it hollers screams, you know, one of the two, if it hollers, you know, let him go, any mini-mini mo. Well, used to have the N word in place of, you know, tiger. So, eh, yikes. Hopefully that was not the version grammar grandpa

was reading you. Thankfully, morality has evolved quite a bit since the days of 18 to 19th century thinking, aware that there is still plenty of room to improve. There will always be because we're never going to be perfect, but glad we've come a long way. And so that kind of shit was, you know, widely socially acceptable to say, to read in school, all that stuff. I also know that the constant change can feel frustrated at times, even when it's good, language constantly being updated, what was totally acceptable, suddenly inflammatory, that can be very stressful.

You know, if you never know what you're allowed to say, what's okay to say, change even good changes, inherently stressful, but that's okay. Stress can create a very, very positive outcomes. Now I think we have a pretty good foundation for understanding nursery rhymes. Their value, what they were often used for. How we don't know most of the authors, et cetera.

Let's dig into the known history of how they came to be now, and primarily English speaking portion of the Western world, at least. And then go over a lot of examples, have a lot of fun with those examples in today's time suck timeline. Right after today's sponsor break. Thanks for listening, everybody. Hope you've had fun learning something new today and laughing a bit while doing so. A lot more laughs and learning ahead. Hopefully, uh, and today's time suck timeline. Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time suck timeline.

We're marching down a time-suck timeline. Briefly stopping in the 14th century to start today's timeline. First every nursery rhymes, first ever nursery rhymes, what am I saying? Thought to have come from the beginning of the 14th century in England and then passed on orally, but as we previously discussed, we don't really know. Fast-forwarding to the 16th century, the first recorded nursery rhyme in English is thought today back to 1580. About the same time Sir Francis Drake returned to England after circumnavigating the world, I thought these things would have dated to back before the discovery of the new world. Again, they did Orally, but parents weren't apparently pulling out a book of nursery rhymes

and reading to the kids quite yet. That 1580 nursery rhyme is the Ding Dong Bell. I mentioned earlier, and it was recorded by John Lange, who was an organist at Winchester Cathedral. That doesn't mean he wrote it. It doesn't mean he came up with it. Probably didn't. I just put it to paper.

The original version went like this. Jackie Boy, Ho Boy News, the cat is in the well. That is ring now for H now ding dong ding dong bell. This early is version, the unfortunate cat does not make it out of the well and the bells are its death now. Like how a lot of the first recorded songs don't compare well with recent hits and how a lot of the first filmed movies don't compare well with recent movies, despite what critics say.

They're fucking utterly unwatchable unless you're studying them or lying to yourself about how great they are. When rhymes came out, a lot of people, you know, they weren't that good compared to now. You know, this Ding Dong Bell is fucking garbage. It desperately needed to rewrite. And by the early 20th century, it became a tale of morality to not be mean to animals and you know, got a little better. Went like this.

Ding Dong Bell puts's in the well. Who put her in little Johnny Green who pulled her out, little Tommy's out. What a naughty boy was that to try to drown poor pussy cat who never did him any harm, but killed all the mice and the farmer's barn. Very recently pussy was replaced by kitty. There's no one under a thousand years old is talking about a cat when they're talking about pussy anymore. And I'm guessing parents and teachers started to feel uncomfortable reciting an old poem

about Johnny and Tommy, Paul and some pussy. The old ding dong bell nursery rhyme still has educational value. It's a good way to introduce a child to onomatopoeia, a word that sounds like it's meaning. And this nursery rhyme, the lyrics in the words ding dong when pronouns convey, you know, actual sounds just before the or the actual sounds of a bell, just before the turn of the 17th century in nursery rhyme called, to market to market, was first published in the UK,

first recorded in 1598 in a world of words or most copious, the exact dictionary and Italian and English, published by a man named John Floreo. It appeared again in the 1611 edition of the book. The lyrics, this knee-slap and ditty pretty straightforward. Let's eat some meat. Still popular. You know, fairly popular. This lyric video posted in 2017 has 650,000 views. To buy a fat pig home again home again dig any dig any jig to market to market to buy a fat hog Home again home again dig any dig any jog Just you know the market to market by plum cake home again markets late

Got it by a plum bun home again the market's done Again, markets late, got it by a plum bun, the home again, the market's done. And you gotta go to the market again, you gotta galloped, get there quick to buy some meat put into a pot, and then this talks about much of cost. It's fucking boring. That rhyme is just based on what people used to do. The traditional real activity of going to the market

or fair where agriculture, produce would be meat, bot and sold. Compared to the day, how fucking boring was life back then? People writing songs about doing some grocery shopping, because that's probably the most exciting part of their week. Let's skip ahead now. Just a few years to the end. These rhymes are gonna get better.

To the end of the first decade of the 17th century, around 1609, we haven't hit the golden age of using grim imagery to teach kids about life and language, but one of the most famous of all the nursery rhymes was published around this time. They'll be written by a man who had the perfect name for a creepy nursery rhyme composer, Thomas Ravenscroft. His name isn't all that well known, despite some pretty hefty contributions to the very language we're speaking. He would publish numerous collections of old social songs, folklore,

religious tunes, nursery rhymes and such. Ravenscroft born around 1582 in Sussex, England. Got his bachelor's in music degree at the University of Cambridge, possibly in 1605 from 1618 to 1622, music master at Christ's Hospital in Sussex. Composed a lot of music, Ravenscroft's three-seconder song books, Pamelia, released in 1609, and Dutor Amelia, also released in 1609,

and Melissa Mata, or Melissa Melissa Mata published in 1611. The first collections in English to include any significant material of popular or traditional origin, non-religious stuff. Pamelia was the first anthology of its kind, containing what are called catches or rounds. Catches are designed to be sung by three or more accompanied, unaccompanied male voices, very popular in the 17th and 18th centuries in England, back when people loved, music of a kind that if I had to listen to enough of,

I might drown myself in a river and hope that if there wasn't afterlife, none of the assholes up there still singing catches. Catches are indefinitely repeatable pieces in which all voices began the same melody and the same pitch, but entered a different time intervals. The Christmas Carole type stuff. If we were to look at these songbooks,

like Ravencrowf's albums, the biggest hit came from his second album, Dutro Milya, also known as the second part of music's melody, and the immortal tune, not the title track, but an upbeat diddy. You've probably heard of called Three Blind Mice. Ravencrowf had a hit. Makes sense that he did. He was among the first to intentionally write to please a middle class layperson,

not just the educated elite. He wasn't playing to the critics, he was playing to the people. The style of writing to regular folks would stick around. Yeah, it's pretty popular still today. I really helped change the world, despite complaints from the powdered wig crowd. I'll just talk about this hit.

Still very popular. Numerous versions on YouTube, one released in 2016 on the channel little baby bum Has almost 26 million views A bunch of other videos have views in the millions. Here's one with original lyrics Not as popular because that video is this video is not animated and you know they didn't cut it up All the recently popular versions I found have Subbed out the line about them getting their getting their tails cut off. So here we go.

Classic version. Three blind mice. Three blind mice. See how they run. See how they run. They all run after the thormous wife who cut off their toes with a carving knife. Did you ever see such a sight in your life as three blind mice? That's weird how familiar all these are. I've heard them so many times as a kid, I guess. A lot of modern complaints about this, why are their tails getting cut off? Where are kids singing about animal cruelty? Are they making fun of blind mice? What the hell is this rhyme about?

Well, you're not going to want to hear this, but this particular rhyme is about your mom. Mm-hmm. It's about your stupid mom. She's a monster who loves to mutilate small creatures with the Carvy knife. Your mom makes me sick! No, but seriously, what's it about? According to some folklorist, three blind mice is about Mary Tudor, aka Mary, the first aka Bloody Mary, who reigned as Queen Regent of England in Ireland from July of 1553 until her death in November of 1558. Let's get to know her a bit so we can understand what this nurse's rhyme is likely about. And at least one other further down in the timeline.

Mary was the star of a few popular rhymes. Almost added, there was just something about Mary, but did not for the record admitting I thought about it, that's the same as doing it. Bloody Mary was the name given to Mary Tudor by her Protestant adversaries in honor of her forceful and pretty bloody efforts to reverse the English Reformation in favor of her preferred Catholicism. She ruled as part of the powerful Tudor dynasty in England. The Tudor royal dynasty began with King Henry, the seventh ascending to the throne of England, Wales and Ireland in 1485, ended with the childless death of Elizabeth I and 1603. They're historically famous for taking the country from a run of the mill, medieval kingdom

to become in a preeminent world power that would then quickly become one of the biggest empires the world's ever known. Before Mary, the tutor dynasty was headed by Mary's famous daddy, King Henry VIII, himself famous for being cruel and capricious. Mary Tutor was born February 18th, 1516 at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, England. She was the only child of King Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Eragon, survived through childhood. She was baptized as Catholic shortly after birth and she took that shit seriously.

Tutor by her mom and scholar, she excelled in music and language. In 1525, when she was nine, her father named her Princess of Wales, the title Lady Die, when later he'll hold, uh, and he sent her to live on the Welsh border. First about it, frustrated by the lack of a male heir in 1533, Henry declared his marriage to Mary's mom, Catherine Noll. No envoy claiming that because he married his deceased brother's wife, it was kind of like incest. And then the Pope was like, wait a minute,

who this motherfucker think he is? Only I can nullify royal marriages. This is not good for business. I mean, this is not right in the eyes of God and stuff. I will not allow it. The move humiliated Catherine and her daughter, Mary, who watched her mother's horrible treatment with shock and contempt as her mom

is banished from the royal court. Essentially sent out into exile and kept from seeing her daughter Mary who watched her mother's horrible treatment with shock and contempt as her mom is banished from the royal court essentially sent out into exile and kept from seeing her daughter. And we would offer both mother and daughter mother and daughter permission to see one another if they would acknowledge and Berlin is the new queen, but both refused. When the Pope backed at Henry's self granted divorce, he was like, well, then fuck your whole church. And he broke off relations with the Catholic church and a whole bunch of priests got real nervous.

I imagine there was a lot of, oh, God, are we getting burned at the stake now? I mean, we traditionally have done the burning, but do we, do we, do we get burned now? I think we get burned now. Todd, we don't get burned now. Not sure Henry would burn any of them, actually. But he would hang at least 430 of them during his reign. Henry established a church of England, a major part of the Christ Reformation in Europe, and he married one of Catherine's maids of honor, Ann Bolin,

yikes. There's a slight betrayal there. I imagine, Ann and Catherine were not like the best of friends after that. Mary and Henry would not work out for, for Ann, much better than it worked out for Catherine though. Ann Bolin gave birth to Elizabeth. Mary's half sister. She feared Mary would pose a challenge to the succession of the throne and successfully pressed for an active parliament to declare Mary illegitimate. This place to princess outside the succession of the throne forced her to be the lady waiting to her half sister Elizabeth. Henry then had the scheming Bolin beheaded in 1536 for treason, Mary's third wife, James

Seymour, was one of Anne's maids of honor. And actually had one of Catherine's maids was one of Catherine's Mades of Honor as well. Oh, a slimy old Hank really love fucking his wife's Mades of Honors. And this made, finally, gives him a son, Edward. And then she will die, less than two weeks later, of complications from childbirth. After King Hank, the royal woman, Hayton Prick, Mary's Fumar women, and has another head locked off. He dies in 1547.

Mary's half brother, Ed where the six becomes king. Six years later in 1553, he dies at the age of 15. After Ed's death, Mary's now 37. She wants to throne. She's seen a lot of shit in her 37 years. Her mom has been banished and died just weeks before her first stepmom is beheaded for treason. Her second stepmom dies in childbirth.

Her third stepmom quickly has her marriage in no because because, eh, Hank's not so excited about that. Fuck it anymore. Her fourth stepmom also beheaded. Fifth stepmom dies in childbirth. Before dying, fifth stepmom, six wife of Henry VIII, Catherine Par, insisted that the king make amends with his daughters, but he'd only do so if Mary acknowledged him to him as head of the Church of England and admitted the illegality of his marriage to her mother Catherine under duress. She agrees But he'd only do so if Mary acknowledged him to him as head of the Church of England and admitted the illegality of his marriage to her mother, Catherine under duress. She agrees. Although Mary does re-enter the royal court, her religious beliefs make her an outcast,

a catalyst for conflict. She's, you know, a Catholic there with the Church of England. All this hardens her into a pretty ruthless soon to be ruler. Mary now challenges and successfully deposes the new queen, Lady Jane Gray. First cousin once removed of Mary's half brother, former king Ed the six. Need a fucking flow chart to keep track of all the shit. Granddaughter of Henry's younger sister, Mary took the throne as the first queen region of England now, first female ruler.

She reinstates her parents, marriage, fucking Bolyn. Also quickly has 17 year old lady, Gray grades head cut off like father like daughter. At first she acknowledges the religious dualism of her country, but then decides, you know what? Fuck these new Protestants converts England back to Catholicism. And then she knows she needs to get married to make her, you know, authority stick being childish. She's worried that if she doesn't marry and doesn't provide an heir, her throne will pass

to her Protestant half sister Elizabeth. There will be a lot of people trying to assassinate her. She needs a Catholic air to avoid the reversal of her reform. So she quickly arranges marriage to Philip II of Spain. The public responds to Mary's marriage, extremely unpopular. She presses on now, repealing many of Henry VIII's religious edicts, replaces them with her own, which include a strict heresy law. The and for more enforcement of this law will result in the burning of perhaps more than 300 Protestants as heretics. Some historians have it at 287 burned.

So while a bunch of priests are not burned, a bunch of pastors are burned. What a terrible way to go. Marriage religious persecutions make her extremely impopular with Protestants. That's what earns her the posthumous, or posthumous nickname of bloody Mary. So that's how we get to bloody Mary, not really a fair title compared to her dad though I got to say. The number of executions and war deaths combined during the reign of Henry VIII has been estimated

to be upwards of 72,000. I'd not be that high. That would be 2.8% of the population of England at that time, but he likely did execute way more fucking people than 300 years of bloodthirsty dude. Love to kill people. Love to execute. A statue was passed in England in 1531 by Henry VIII that made willful murder by means

of poison-high treason punishable by boiling to death. You'd have people boil to live publicly, Richard Roose, cook of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, poison the porridge supposedly of Rochester in his guests in February of 1531. I say supposedly because I was question medieval justice and here's what a witness wrote about his demise. He roared mighty loud like as he's getting fucking boiled. Of course he did.

He's screaming and women who were big with child did feel sick at the side of what they saw and were carried away half dead. Yeah, people fucking passing out because it's so horrific to watch this guy being bored alive. Roots would have been strung up in a series of pulleys and ropes hung precariously over a drum of boiling liquid, maybe water, maybe tar, could be oil, wine, whatever, whatever that king buffez. The executioner would then kind of dip him, would lower the condemned down of the liquid, then raising back up. I just fucking burning for a little while and pulling back up, let him scream for a while, and dip him again, just back and forth like this, highly painful demise.

In addition to being boiled, people were beheaded, hang burned alive, drawn and quartered even during Henry VIII's watch. That was another especially rough way to go. Here's the description of being drawn and quartered. First, the prisoner was dragged behind a cart from their jail or prison to where their execution was to take place. Once there, the prisoner is hanged without a drop to ensure that the neck is not broken and cut down while still conscious.

Then I think it's loud worse. Already bad, it gets loud worse. The penis and testicles are cut off and the stomach is slit open. Fuck. The intestines are hard to remove and burn before them. Jesus Christ. The other organs are torn out. Finally, the head is cut off.

Body divided into four quarters. The head in quarters. Power boiled to prevent them rotting too quickly. Then displayed upon the city gates as a grim warning to all. They hain' you a little bit. Just for fun, these. Let you wiggle around a little bit.

Just choke up, tear up for a bit. Your neck all scraped raw. And then the other bit is just like, oh, off with his dick! Off with his nuts! And that's what the king's saying, you know, eating a big old fucking turkey leg. Off with his dick! And then, you know, after that, you get your stomach cut open. And if you haven't blooded death, you know, already you finally die when they tear your

fucking heart out and burn it in front of you. It was a bloody time! Henry AIDS was bloody. Queen Mary was bloody. So much blood. Whether her nickname is earned or, you know, just hyperbole, a bloody Mary turns up as the secret star of a few of the darker nursery rhymes and definitely not very popular with the Protestant crowd.

Maybe people villainized her because she was a woman. And she would have been just another ruthless tyrant. This another guy, poising people left and right like, you know, a lot of guys before. Quite possible. Now let me tie this all back in with three blind mice, the actual stars of three blind mice, the three mice of the rhymes are believed by many historians and folk lures to be bloody Mary's enemies, ultimately her victims. They're said to refer to a group of Protestant bishops, Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Radley, and the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer.

These three unsuccessfully conspired to overthrow bloody Mary in favor of her sister Elizabeth the first, and then when Mary became queen, she was like, well, fuck those guys. And she punished him, just like her dad punished anyone coming after his crown, real or imagined before. Some of her interpretationsations refer to the blindness in the rhyme to be the trio's religious beliefs, right? These Protestants were blind to the true nature of the obviously Catholic God. And there are other rumors that Mary actually had them blinded just to torture them before they were killed.

That part probably not true. There's not a lot of records like blindings that way. No, they probably would have just been branded as hair ticks. And then, you know, burn to the stake. That's all. Haha. I'm not gonna gouge their eyes out. Come on, that's too much.

That's too far across the line. They're just gonna be burned to death. And they're gonna be super happy to still have their eyes. They're gonna be up on the, you know, stake just been like little hot for my liking, but I'm so very glad to see all of you. Thank you, merciful Mary, for allowing me to retain my peoples, a bit irritated with the smoke at the moment, but soon that should be a problem no more, for they should have been burned away into but assault shakes worth of ash. Oh, what a wonderful

way to go. Were they possibly tortured, maybe even dismembered in some other way before being burned? That is possible. Maybe cutting off of the tails in the rhyme is a nod to, you know, some protruding appendage of theirs being whacked off, whacked off in a bad way. Now I kind of wish it was done the first way. I thought, that's pretty funny to think about. You know, sometimes guys were just jerked off before their executions.

I want to burn you alive, gentlemen, but first, nothing wrong with a little handy. It's you good and relaxed for the big show, more on bloody Mary later back to the timeline. 17th century loaded with new rhymes for the littlest of kids. 1639 marked the first appearance of that 17th century banger, Jack Spratt, right in a collection of proverbs and songs published by John Clark. We got another morning rock block for you here. Strap on those mosquit, Doc Martins.

Gotta kill everyone after this dose of pure audio adrenaline. It's so big. Yeah, that's just the tip. DJ iceberg. Here is Jack Spirats! Oh man! Just another banger! The original rhyme ended with Jack ate all the lean,

Joan ate all the fat, the bone they picked to clean, they gave it to the cat. Later on around 1765, it's collected in nursery songs book, The Mother's Goose Melody. What's it talking about? Turn Jack Spratt used to refer to short people in the 16th century, but that might not be what it was about just a character detail. Historically, there are many theories about the character of Jack Spratt, but not much evidence

to support any of them definitively jack sprat could have could have been uh... reference to king charles the first story about uh... the conflict between the king and parliament of the time the lean and fat would represent the varying heft of a proposed tax of trulls the first a fun kids ride about taxes kids love taxes uh... the king intended war against pain and and the parliament wouldn't support its costs. So we decided to dissolve parliament.

He would dissolve it three times during his reign and he and his wife, Queen Henrietta, Maria legally gathered a war tax from the citizens. A move that made Charles very unpopular. His reign would end in parliament forming an army loyal to them and not to the king and then in his imprisonment and be heading. A lot of people used to get their heads locked off, at least compared to now. Jack Sprat could also be correlated with the Robin Hood legend and the story of King John and his brother Richard the first, both characters portrayed in the famous legend. It was basically the good king, Richard the Lionheart versus the bad king, King John the Dick,

Jack Sprat, Jack Sprat, thought to be the dickhead King John, or maybe Jack Sprat, none of those dudes. And the rhyme, you know, is just a rhyme, a fun little rhyme that may double as a fable with the moral lesson. Between the 16th and 17th centuries, the rhyme was especially popular in England, the moral, thought by some to be better to go supriless than to rise in debt. And that's why Jack didn't eat any fat. He couldn't afford it. So, you know, he wasn't going to put it on credit.

He was just going to pick the bone clean. He was a frugal son of a bitch. Moving along the timeline of this steadily evolving art form of children's literature, I know that the earliest nursery rhymes that remains popular is thought to be first published in 1698, Pettikek, Pettikek, Baker's Man, another banger. This nursery rhyme is still stupid popular. So many videos on YouTube, and so many of them have so many views.

Three of them have over 250 million views each. It's absurd. So it's a big hit. Also, a lot of interesting variations on this one now. Back to cake, back to cake, Baker's man, Bake me a cake, as fast as you can. Okay. Back it and break it and mark it with me. Put it in the O1 for baby and me.

Okay, that's on rhythm. Check out this other one. There's so many interesting rhythms in some of these old rhymes. Pat's a cake, Pat's a cake, Pat's a cake, Pat's a good one. Uh huh.

Pat's a cake, Pat's a cake, Pat's a cake, Pat's a cake, Pat's a cake, Pat's a cake, Pat's a cake, Pat's a cake,

Pat's a cake, Pat's a cake, Pat's a cake, Pat's a cake, Pat's a cake, Pat's a cake, Who signed off on these? Not through the my remember, whatever I guess. I used to play this one with my grandma Betty when I was a wee lad. And I remember playing it with Kyler and Roe when they were wee lad as well. The Paddockate game learned by many children before they're old enough to talk. The earliest recorded 1698 version shows up in a play, the campaigners written by Thomas the earth ray, the earth a, there we go, in which a nurse sings it to the kids,

she's taking care of. And Patta Cake, Bakeus Mann, so I will master as I can and prick it, and prick it and prick it and prick it. Actually written that many times, and throw it into the oven. It appears again, much closer to its current form and mother goose's melody in 1765.

Who knows what it first caught on as children's rhyme? What does it mean? We couldn't find anything dark on this one, but an interesting tidbit we did find was centuries ago, very few people had their own ovens. They didn't have ovens in their homes. It was kind of like a community oven. They would mark their uncooked pastry with a symbol

or a letter before taking it to be baked at the communal oven. And that way, it was going to be there when you came back to get it. So that line of pat it and pray get a mark with a B put it in the oven for baby and me is referring to don't anyone still my fucking cake, bro. That's my baby's cake, bro. Uh, in 1730, the not as popular real rhyme as I was going to St. Ives was published for the first time in England. It's about a man with between seven and nine wives, plus there's a bunch of cats and kittens and sacks and shit.

It's a hot mess. This guy sounds like he loves drama. It's also a mathematical riddle. Yes, some of these old Nurtur rhymes would double his riddles. And this one was actually featured in Die Hard with the Vengeance from 1995, as heard by Bruce Willis and Samuel Jackson here there's a significant amount of explosive is a trash receptacle next come on

not only is going to run but i got a hundred people out here that's the point now do i have your attention yes as i was going to some dives i met a man with seven wives wives. Every wife had seven sacks. Every sack has seven cats. Every cat has seven kittens. The kittens cat, sacks and wives. How many were going to some dives? My phone number is 555. No, no, no, wait! I didn't get all I'd say it again! Not a chance. My phone number is 555 and the answer. Call me in 30 seconds or die. What's the answer? Can anybody solve the riddle before they can? Guys with 7W.

Shut up, McLean, I'm good at this. 7W, 7W. Shut the fuck up, McLean. He said 7W, 7SAC. 7TAC 7 is 49. They tell me the rest. Oh, you're SAC with 7-7-7? What's your listening?

Yeah, it was just gonna hear me fucking... Come on guys! Besides having a bad fucking hangover for one thing. Alright, alright, alright. 7W, 7-7-49 with 7CAT cats. Seven times 49 is three forty three, right? What do you ask? Can we be a tellin' me? I'm telling you three forty three cats are in it. Okay.

Man, come on. 24, two thousand four hundred one. What'd you get, right? Yeah, that's what I got. Is that it? Two four hundred one? Nope. It's not, guys. Two zero one.

I've seen this scene before. It's not it. Wait, wait, it's a trick. It's a trick. What do you mean? I forgot about the man. What man, fuck the man, we got 10 seconds. He said how many were going to St. I.S., right?

The group begins as I was going to St. I.S. I met a man with seven wives. The guy and his wives are going anywhere. What are they doing? Sitting in the fucking row, waiting on the moon. How the hell should I know? I was going to St. I.S. Good guy.

Just the guy. Good guy. Just one guy. The answer is one. The answer is one. The answer is one of The answer is one. The answer is one of that riddle. And if I had a thousand years to work on that riddle, I would have never selted.

I am probably the world's worst riddle solver. Everyone would have died. The bomb would have gone off if it would have been me. Yeah, the guy probably didn't actually have a lot of wives also, by the way. Polygamy would have been pretty usual for a 17th century Cornished Village. More likely, the word wife was used by, at that time in place to mean woman. I would take well over a century after Ravencroft's three blind mice was published before the first collection of true English nursery rhymes would be widely printed. 1744. This first major nursery rhyme installment would help usher in the golden age

of darkest fuck children's literature. The initial book was called Tommy Thumbs, Pretty Song Book. You know how to me that pretty song book. It contains some of the most popular, also more twisted theme but nursery rhymes of the mall. No one is 100% sure of pretty song book is the actual first ever collection collection or if it's simply the oldest surviving collection because it was so widely printed. Both volumes one and two were advertised for sale in early 1744. Sadly, zero copies of volume one are known to survive today. And only two copies of the second volume, you know, the first printing of the second volume are on record to have survived. Someone finds that first volume in an attic or old family library or something. It's gonna fetch it. It's gonna fetch a pretty penny. Pretty song book volume two included 39 rhymes, which are still familiar

today, such as blah, blah, black sleep, black sheep, hickory, Dickory, Doc, Girls and Boys come out to play. Plenty of other famous ones will discuss plus two of my favorite titles. Who killed Cockrobin? And right at Cockhorse, the Bamburri Cross. I shit you not. The actual lyrics of Cockrobin, sadly, are long and fucking boring. I had high hopes, but there's a reason it's not very popular now. Kind of sucks. What even is a Cockrobin? If I had

to guess, I would say it's Chimera of some sort, the hybrid, part bird, part human dick. I mean, right? It's logical. Probably a Robin, probably a little bird with a human dick for a head. Right, a cock horse to bathe inbury Cross. This is another banger. You should work this into your songs for Little Kids Repetwa. Stet. Right a cock horse to Bambri Cross to see a fine lady upon a white horse. Mm-hmm. It's catchy.

With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes. She shall have music where her she goes. And then just, you know, talks a lot more about this. Right across this cock horse hop on that trusty cock seed. You gotta ride that cock horse. Yeah, yeah, ride that cock horse. Go see a fine lady upon a white horse, then ask her why she gets to ride a white horse and why you have a cock horse.

Comments under that last video I just played or disabled. Of course they are too many people out there like teenage me probably throwing a lot of cock comments under kids video. What the hell's that one about? Obviously it's about kids getting fucked by horses, which was super popular in and around bandberry at that time. Bandberry was known as the place where kids got fucked by horses. No, I don't think so.

I hope not. No one has any idea. No, I don't think so. Hope not. No one has any idea. A cock horse was just a high spirited horse. It just can be a horse that's not a gilding horse that hasn't had its nuts whacked off. It's still got that full cock. Another analogy forgotten rhyme from 1744's Tommy Thulmes' pretty song book is a,

is that classic pissabed. Seriously, it's a short one and it goes like this Pissabed pissabed, body butt, you'll bum is so heavy. You can't get up That's it Seems to be just about bedwenders. Glad none of my friends knew that one back when I was a little mattress-soaker Kedemshoor love this shit. A lot of the rhymes, you know silly and fun was first printed. There was nothing else like it Tommy Thames pretty songbook was carefully designed to delight and appeal to children. It was very small, about three inches by two inches, you know, would fit perfectly in a child's hand. All the rhymes illustrated the pages printed in red and black

ink, cute little books. So who wrote it? Since this was the first time again that we know of that anything like this had been collected written down printed, there could have been many authors spanning many, many years. The supposed authors name of at least some of the lyrics appears on the final page. The pen name nurse love child. And no one knows who nurse love child was or even if that was a real person. The book seller who appears on the title page, Mary Cooper, maybe in the real author, at least to some of them, whoever wrote them, some do seem to have some dark origins like oranges and lemons like oranges and lemons.

Oranges and lemons say the bells of St. Clements. You owe me five farthings say the bells of St. Martin's. When will you pay me say the bells of Old Bailey? When I grow rich say the bells of shortage. When will that be say the bells of Stephanie? I do not know say the great bell of bow. Here comes a candle to light you to bed and here comes a chopper to chop off your head. Chip, chop, chip, chop, the last one is dead.

Again, so many beheadings. What does this mean? According to some hardcore nursery rhyme nerds, the bells of the first verse belong to famous churches and London, the very same churches that a condemned man would walk past on his way to the executioners block. Thank Clemens. The first church thoughts to be based near the docks, where cargo would be delivered from the Mediterranean,

including oranges and lemons. Also the docks where condemned men walked their last steps towards their deaths. I had imagined walking to your death bells ringing, and some kids are just singing. Here comes the chopper, chip chop, chip chop. What fun, final moments. Huh, look at the bad sad man, mummy, chip chop, chip chop. Here comes the chopper to chop off

your head. So fucking easy to get your head chopped off back then. A lot of people dig it their head's chopped off between the late 17th, early 19th century, Britain's bloody code made more than 200 crimes, uh, punishable by death. Many of them trivial. Between 1770, 1830, and estimated 35,000 deaths sentences handed down in England and Wales, of which 7,000 executions were actually carried out at least, 7,000. You can be sent to death for all kinds of stuff. You can be sent to death for stealing five shillings worth

of goods, petty shoplifting basically, or for stealing literally anything from a shipwreck. Don't take anything from a shipwreck, don't take anything with shipwreck. Or this is my favorite, for cutting down a young tree, for quote, cutting down a young tree. Literally could be like, you know, hang your head chopped off, for cutting down a young tree.

Love that the age of the tree is kind of specified, but still vague. Right? Like how confusing. Please, sir, don't, don't chop off my head. I have a family. I like how confusing. Please sir, don't, don't chop off my head, I have a family, I have five children. You should have thought about those children when you cut down that young tree, Mr. Withers. But that's just if I, I didn't think the tree was young, is an older tree sir, used to climb it myself as a land. And that is why I was comfortable cutting it down,

it's a good 50 years old of it's a day sir. And you think 50 years is old, Mr. Withers? 50 years old if it's a day saw and you think 50 years is old mr. Withers I do so My wife is 51 mr. Withers would you say I'm married to an old woman? No, sir women and trees is different So but she's a but the girl but like dogs trees age a bit different so do you compare my wife to a dog mr. Withers? I think you did chop off his head That's fucking crazy time to be alive Another of the pretty song books tunes for little kids with some darkness in it is one that has remained pretty popular over the years It's a tough off his head. Uh, that's fucking crazy time to be alive. Another of the pretty song books tunes for little kids with some darkness in it is one that has remained pretty popular over the years.

Mary Mary, quite contrary. Like so many other nursery rhymes, it has an original version, you know, a modern version. Here's the version most of us know. Mary Mary, quite contrary. How does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockleshells and pretty maids all in a row? The original versions slightly different. It was called mistress Mary, quite contrary mistress Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow with silver bells and cockleshells and so my garden grows

This one sounds to me like it's about a little girl and you're fucking garden that you know, I don't care about But it has a number of angle file history nerd saying it's again about bloody Mary and her deadly campaign of religious persecution. Some historical speculation here for sure, but here's what some think. The Garden in the lyrics, they think refers to bloody Mary's growing cemeteries filled with the bodies of products and dead that she's executed. And silver bells and cockleshells, colloquialisms for instruments of torture. Silver bells were thumb screws, which would crush the thumb between two hard surfaces by the tightening of said screw,

ouch. Cockleshells believed to be instruments of torture, attached to a man's genitals to crush those. Ha-ha! More ouch. And the maids, the name of a crew devised to be head people called the maiden, a form of guillotine.

Makes me think, last week, S's suck Marcel Petio's head, but the smile on his face after being locked off his body. One of the most famous of these kid songs that was published in pretty songbook, one with all kinds of speculation about a dark origin is London Bridge is falling down. This one's been super popular for centuries, another banger between various YouTube videos, hundreds and hundreds of millions of views. And I always thought it was London Bridges plural, falling down, its London bridge is falling down.

And again, there are some interesting variations out there. ["Unlimited Bridges"] Ooh, I'll remember grandma read me this version. At least she didn't perform it this way That's a good one to play for the kids if you really want to try and up their nightmare game Or if you really like some bagpipes you want something a little more upbeat you play this. I like this one. It's by Fram, F-R-A-M. So if you want to hear another language, there's a bunch of options out there. Some of these are a lot of fun.

You can see that. This has a catchy ass rhythm. Fuck yeah, bro. The metal band corn has a song called shoots and ladders that it's a medley of this and so many other nursery rhymes. Too long to play here and not that great actually. Now one of their best songs and don't want to get flagged for copyright violation. Most don't bust into the second verse which is, set a man to watch on night, watch on night, watch on night,

set a man to watch on night, my fair lady. I knew this one was a kill like so many others. Pretty sure I might have done a little ring around the Rosie type dance to it in the yard. There are actually several more additional lines to the rhyme, they're pretty boring. They seem to be pretty harmless, just a long rhyme about an unstable bridge.

But is that what it's really about? There are three theories. One is that it just is about an old bridge. Literally falling down from, you know, years of use, too many people, structures on it for too long. Yeah, there was a ton of fires as well. Another is that it's about a Viking invasion in the 11th century, tearing the bridge down.

And the third is darkest fuck. The third revolves around an ancient game of human centipede. Sacrifice is what I meant, not centipede. Human sacrifice is what I didn't mean to say, but should have meant to say. But now you're thinking about human centipede. Before looking into these three theories, let's learn some history about London bridges. There has been several, and I find this very interesting. There has been a bridge across the River Thames in London for nearly 2000 years.

The first London bridge was built by the Romans back in 43 CE. They built a temporary pontoon bridge, planks laid across a row of anchored boats. That's pretty clever. The next record of a bridge comes from 984 CE, jumping several centuries ahead. Many centuries, when a report was recorded of a widow who after the woman was accused of being a witch because someone maybe saw her,

pushed them pins into a drawn image of some dude. She was taken to London Bridge and drowned. She tossed off and drowned. Sounds about right for back then. You can sound the way I do a picture, IE. We should probably kill you. Okay, she'd be some kind of witch. That bridge was built out of wood. Couple decades later in 1014, the Danes held London. And then some Saxons under King Ethelred, the Unready were joined by a band of Vikings from Norway, led by their king Olaf. Maybe betterred, the unready were joined by a band of Vikings from Norway led by their king Olaf, maybe better name than the unready to take it from them. They sailed with the River Thames to attack the bridge and divide the Danes. They rode up under the bridge tied cables

around the pile supporting it, rode off at full speed and pulled that motherfucker down. Those are some strong ass rowers. The bridge they pulled down was it was big. Cottages stood on it with thatched roofs and the London bridge once again had to be rebuilt. 1176, the first stone London bridge begins to be built under the direction of Peter of Colchurch, priest, chaplain, engineer, Renaissance man. I was commenting these days for many of the class design buildings, monastery areas were the best and often only schools. So a lot of the most educated were priests. Completed in 1209, this new London bridge took 33 years to build.

And then it would last for more than 600 years. So nice work, Peter, Peter, Bridge Builder. What an amazing old bridge it was. You can find illustrations online. It is incredible. It had a road upon it 20 feet wide, about 300 yards long, supported by 20 arches, with a curve to a gothic style point.

There was a wooden drawbridge on the bridge to let ships in and keep invaders out for most of its history. Nice. Fuck you Vikings. Fuck you French. You can take your burger king bullshit back to petty. You get it. The flow of the water underneath it was used to turn water wheels below the arches first

for grinding grain and starting in 1580 to pump water into the city. So you can drink some of that super clean, purified, temps water. Cool and refreshing going down. Hot and angry coming out. After its completion, people and merchants were allowed to begin building houses and shops on the well-built stone bridge. As soon as it was completely covered with buildings, it would be at its height, populated with around 200 wooden shops and businesses. It's like an early shopping mall, but one

with people pissing and shit on the floor. Pretty cool. Not to piss and shit on the floor part. Cool that they had all these shops and stuff on this massive old bridge. Reminds me of some bridges in Italy. Well, yeah, some people lived on the bridge as well, then in 12, 12 just fears after it was completed, disaster strikes. A crowd of people are trapped on the London bridge between two fires. Although definitive totals can't be known, some estimate that 3,000 of the 50,000 London residents burned a death during this fire, but the bridge would remain heavy percentage of people either getting their headlocked off or burning to death in this suck. Yay, history.

Speaking of death, there was a stone gate house on the bridge and on its roof stood poles where traders' heads were placed. That's fun. This practice started in 1304. All over Cromwell's head will be placed on one of the poles, 350 years later. His quote unquote execution is so fucking weird. Not going to get too far into Cromo's life story, not really at all. Too complicated to explain quickly, but his execution, this is worth it. This deviation is worth it. This is not the first time something like this has come up in one of our stories, but it's been a while. It took place well after he died.

Dude died of natural causes after living in the age of 59, probably related to malaria. He was buried with honor. He was a national hero. In 2002, in a BBC poll, he was still selected as one of the 10 greatest Britons of all time. Well, some political shit changed shortly after his death, centered around some Game of Thrones royal revenge and stuff. And it leads to Oliver's body being exhumed. They fucking dig him up over two years after he dies, along with the bodies of two other dead guys. They're all dug up. They're posthumously

executed. Crumwell's rotten body, exune from Westminster Abbey in the morning, publicly dragged to the streets for a while and London, taken to Tyburn Gallows. You know, let's get him. Next is corpse is strung up and chains, is long dead corpse until four o'clock that afternoon, then it struck down and then decapitated. Then his head is impaled on a 20 foot pole and displayed in front of Westminster Hall. That'll teach him. And then later they take his head and display on the bridge for a long time, because

why not? So some super macabre, a pomp and circumstance here, holy shit. Just dragging his clothes, skeleton around, just trying to change the king now, Oliver. Not so tough now, yeah. And other weird idiots with his head, off with his head. Then the new king, let's see how tough you are, with no head, Oliver any final words? Answer me. Maybe some squire or some shit's like, he's long dead side. Yes, right.

When I hope your head-loving, still sting, so off with his dead head then. Now fucking gross for everyone walking around who had to smell and look at his rotting head Fuck barbarians Humans are barbarians the shopkeepers nearby, you know, they were punished more severely than Oliver was Some poor bastard working on his fucking bacon having to stare at that head all the time and I'm sure I did deserve this Rather not have to look out my shop window and see all of us rotting skull staring back at me

where I'm trying to sell some some bacon I reckon also how especially fucked up for his family look more grandpa I think he's winking at me no dear papa's one eye has just completely rotted out uh enough about kram well okay so of course these nursery rhymes are dark think about what's going on when they're being written. 1577, none such house is built a top London bridge to replace the draw bridge, stretching across the bridge with a tunnel running through it at street level. Very cool little structure here, four stories, four stories tall, not a single nail used in its construction, earliest known example of a prefabricated building.

Originally constructed in the Netherlands, and taken apart, shipped to London, and rebuilt. Fire strikes again in 1633. The fire starts when a maid servant leaves a pale of ashes under some wooden stairs. 43 houses are destroyed on the bridge. Many of the shops burned and damaged. Some of these buildings not repaired or replaced for decades, which would actually then make it a that little section of burnt out bridge, a fire break for a worse fire coming up in 1666. This massive fire estimated to have destroyed the homes of 70,000 of the cities, then

80,000 inhabitants. Burns almost everything. Starting near the bridge in a baker shop on putting lane, burned more structures atop the bridge, only didn't spread south the river because that major blaze in 1633, he had already destroyed a section of the bridge. Around this time, the bridge started to wear down slowly, pieces of it began to randomly fall into the river Thames, slightly alarming if you're working on it, living on it. Soon the merchants began moving out like fuck this fire bridge, you know, it's getting too dilapidated by 1657, all the houses are pulled down before it finally collapses. The bridge is widened, partially rebuilt with the wide center arch.

The bridge stays like this for over a century more until 1831, when another London bridge is opened. The new bridge built a hundred feet west of the old bridge. Beginning in 1831, the old medieval London bridge is dismantled. Many of its stones end up in the river, some use for building embankments. There's a wall alongside A226 made from old bridge stones. Two pedestrian alcoves can be found at the eastern end of Victoria Park. There are ones on the bridge and there's other remnants scattered around. The New

London Bridge would last until 1962 when it was discovered that this London Bridge was now falling down, sinking into the Thames because it's not adequate for the increase in traffic. It was a phase of the time. It's taken apart and actually randomly later rebuilt in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, after American bought it. Back to the nursery rhyme now, now that we know a little bit about the bridge, the rhyme could just be about the bridge being dismantled

after starting on its own to fall down, or it could be about those 11th century Vikings that pulled the old wooden precursor to the stone medieval bridge down, or it could be about human centipede, mouth to butthole to mouth to butthole, full circle, ring around the devil's rosy. Wait, sacrifice could be about human sacrifice, not centipede. Need to explain one more thing in order to present the sacrifice theory. In addition to being a popular rhyme, London Bridge is

falling down was also once a popular children's game. Not sure if a lot of kids are still planning. Here's how it was played. Two kids would make an arch holding their hands up face to face. The rest of them passing under the arch, one by one, creating a circle. I think I played this as a kid. They would continue to walk under the arch, you know, one by one in the circle. When the last word of the verse is said, my fair lady, the two kids who formed the arch,

they have to capture one child by dropping their hands down, trapping this kid right inside their little bridge they're making. And the game continues until each kid has been captured. Sounds interesting at first, but not when combined with a fucked up human sacrifice possible origin story. According to folklorist Alice Bertha Gums, the traditional games of England, Scotland and Ireland originally published in 1894. The song is not just about the bridge falling down from so many fires. It's about blood magic and sacrifice. Legend states that in the olden days, people believe that a bridge

would collapse unless the body of a human sacrifice was buried into its foundations. And that actually would happen in some places, which is crazy. Probably you find a few people who believe that, you know, is how it should be done now, with how medieval some people think. And some think a kid, or possibly many kids, were killed in some kind of blood sacrifice and their bones were buried into the foundation of the medieval bridge,

or they were buried alive into the foundation of the bridge, and the occult being buried alive in this way is sometimes called emirament. It's a form of imprisonment, usually until death, in which a person is sealed within an enclosed space with no exits. Yikes.

This includes instances when people have been enclosed in extremely tight confinement, such as a coffin, buried behind bricks in the foundation of a wall or something. And that legend makes the child's London bridge game where the kids trapped a loser with their arms pretty creepy. When used as a means of execution, the prisoner in a mirror meant to simply left a die from starvation, dehydration, or sometimes asphyxiation. So where does the rhyme mention a person being sacrificed? According to this theory, it's the watchman. You know, said a man to watch all night, my fair lady.

Most think that guy would just some dude pay to sit and keep an eye on all the flammable things, alert people to another fire Some say he was the unfortunate victim that was killed so that his spirit would then watch over the bridge forever and for some reason he's a kid Right he's the watchman is like and put into the foundation People really have faced a mirrorment throughout history I found an article about an unfortunate Mongolian woman who faced that punishment in the early 20th century complete with a picture Awesome who faced that punishment in the early 20th century, complete with a picture. Awesome. But no, there's no archaeological evidence for any human remains in the foundations of London Bridge. Suggesting this theory is not true. The nursery rhyme could still be about it, though,

but it would just be about the legend as opposed to having any historical factual basis. Pretty crazy to think about. This, this, this, amurement. Like, what if they really did put somebody into the bridge? At first, I want to be like, get the fuck out of here with that. It's too far. There's no way. There's no way those psychos would do something like put a living kid inside the foundation to die just to make the bridge supposedly stronger.

But then I thought about how one of the earliest historical references to London bridge is that story of the woman they drowned near the bridge, where supposedly pushing pins into some drawing which meant she was a witch. And I thought about all over Cromwell being executed a couple years after he died. woman they drown in the bridge, for supposedly pushing pins into some drawing, which meant she was a witch. And I thought about all over Cromwell, being executed a couple years after he died, is rotting to capitated head, being displayed on the bridge for God knows how long.

That'll maybe think, yeah, okay, sure, why not? I'm here with some kid in the foundation, fuck it. Not really crazier than so much other shit going on. They were definitely doing. Thank you, God, universe, whatever, for allowing me to be born in the late 20th century. Not back in those much more savage times, at least not as savage in the Western world here. Okay, enough with Tommy Thumbin is pretty songbook, although there are a few more we can discuss. Another important kid's book came out, 1744.

John Newbury, bookseller, publisher. He set up his business in St. Paul's church yard, published his first children's book called The Little Pretty Pocket Book. I definitely did not keep confusing these two books. It came out the same year with almost the exact same name. And I for sure didn't have to stop the recording to go back and look over my notes and go back online and do one more research because I thought I was going crazy. This book was enormously popular, not just in Europe, but in colonial America as well. Newbery dedicated it to the parents, guardians, and nurses in Great Britain and Ireland.

It's the first book to ever reference the game of baseball around in trivia and print. I refer into the game of rounders, a precursor to baseball, but still. It was an instant hit, became apparent in John Newbery that his firm could make substantial profits by publishing more children's tales and rhymes. So he published, you know, more kids books, greatly helping to establish children's literature as an important branch of the publishing business.

He is now considered the father of children's literature. And every year since 1922, the Newberry Medal, named after him, has been awarded to authors of the most distinguished contributions to American literature for children. His most successful publication was Little Goody Tushus, published in 1766. Here's a quick rhyme from the little pretty pocket book called Marbles. Knuckle down to your ta, aim well, shoot away, keep out of the ring, and you'll soon learn to play. And then below it, John writes out the moral of this story, also in rhyme. Moral. Time rolls like a marble. to play. And then below it, John writes out the moral of this story, also in rhyme, moral,

time rolls like a marble, and all is airy state, then improve each movement before it is too late. I like that one. Work on making the most of your life before your life is gone. In 1765, another super famous nursery rhyme showed up, Jack and Jill, published in London in a reprint of John Newbury's mother, Goose's melody. Jack and Joe went up the hill to fetch a pale of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown and Joe came to him later. I remember the kid thinking that was weird. What kind of what kind of water hill? With these two dipshits walking up. I was so steep. If there was some kind of death trap, well, why do they have to do it? I couldn't someone older stronger, more agile do it. Uh, just breaking a crown equal cracking your scope open. Once again, what in the hell are they talking about here? Some people

online think this is coded language, alluding to the executions of French king Louis, the 16th and Marie Antoinette. And those people are wrong. They were executed in 1793, well after this rhyme first showed up. Some of the small old English town of Kilmerden, Kilmerden, population 541, claim this rhyme is about a couple in 1697. He used to live there and they'd sneak up on a hill for some time away from their spouses. You know, for a little affair, they have signs and a little path marked off and everything about this tourism ploy. Maybe according to this bit of legend, this adulterous affair led to Jill getting pregnant

and Jack then somehow dined from falling on a rock and Kagan is fucking skulled and then poor Jill allegedly went on to die in childbirth. Another possible dark origin story. The rhyme has been modified several times over the years with additional lyrics being added at one point additional verses were thrown in and, you know, Jack was now okay. Then got then up Jack got no then up got Jack and said to Jill, as in his arms he took her, brush off that dirt for you're not hurt. Let's fetch that pale of water.

So Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch the pale of water and took it home to mother deer who thanked her son and daughters. Now they're, you know, siblings and all that stuff. Now let's talk mother goose. The first confirmed collection of nursery rhymes using the term Mother Goose was published in 1780 by a man named John Carnan, although there are claims of others that go back further. Like almost all the other rhymes,

we've covered hard to say who the authors of these tales were. That I mentioned there were a lot of fires in England, burned up a lot of records. This was another very popular children's book. The illustrations accompanying the publication depicted Mother Goose as an old chrome, an old witch. Of course, this is a time of witches and witch hunts. And the Mother Goose Witches' nursery rhymes fell into three distinct categories.

First category of Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes included lullabies such as Rockabye Baby. Second type was for infant amusement and education. There was like many of the county and alphabet rhymes in that section. The third section included riddles, like the aforementioned, as I was going to St. Ives. But who wrote all that shit? Again, yeah, no one knows. Various claims have been made claiming ownership of the term mother goose, but I'm not going to bore you with all the details.

It would be a pun intended wild goose chase that would lead to nowhere. Now, let's talk about one of these witches rhymes, starting with rockabye baby, a classic, another banger. If you think about it, the popular nursery rhyme, rockabye baby contains some pretty obviously dark lyrics. Rockabye baby on the treetops when the wind blows, the cradle will rock when the bow breaks, the cradle will fall and down will come baby, cradle and all. Who the fuck put a baby up in a tray? Why do we need to hear about a branch breaking and a baby I'm guess falling and dying? And most fucked up, why are we reading this shit to actual babies?

Feels super dark. At quick glance to me, it comes across as basically singing your baby rock. A baby left up in the tree. Nobody loves you. Can't you see you're not safe, but I learned to crawl climb and do crawl. Good luck stupid baby. Bound to die when you fall. It's a cold world baby.

Only the strong survive. Where might this disturbing nursery rhyme come from? Some claim that the impetus of rockabye baby comes from the real life Kenyan family of Derbyshire, not Derbyshire. Derbyshire, Derbyshire, not Hobbits. I remember the feedback. Kenyan family of Derbyshire, England. Back in the 1700s, lunatics, Kate and Luke Kenyon, and their eight children apparently

actually lived in a hollowed out U tree. Tree was massive and old, perhaps as old as 2000 years according to legend, the Kenyon's hollowed out, one of the branches of the tree made it to cradle for their babies. Fun times in the days before social workers checked in on the welfare of children. Who the fuck were these people? Tucked safety into the tree branch, the child could be a be little to sleep by the movement of the tree in the wind. Okay, well, that's kind of sweet, actually. And I guess none of their kids fell off a branch and died.

So maybe I shouldn't judge these tree folks so harshly. Apparently, the U-tree still exists in the woods outside of Derbyshire. There are some pictures online. It was damaged in the 1930s when Vandals lit a fire inside of it. Another possible origin story for Rock of I Baby claims the lyrics were based on the written observations of a pilgrim boy, new to the new world, the young child witnessed Native American mothers placing their infants in sturdy cradles made from birch bark. These cradles were then hung from trees, from low branches, and the soothing motion of the wind would gently rock the baby to sleep, freeing up the moms to do their other work. And that actually is very sweet. Seems less crazy than the whole family living in a tree. But you

know, if those tree folk are happy, who cares? I retract my previous tree folk judgments, live your life, tree people. If you're not hurting in one, I shouldn't care. Still, let her say the rock I buy baby was not meant to be a nursery rhyme. Instead, it was an allegory about political unrest. It was the 17th century rage against the machine song, but without Morello's great riffs and Dela Roca's passion and without being, you know, good and stuff. In this origin story, the diddy was supposedly penned in a British pub during the glorious revolution of 1688. The lyrics referred to the new heir to the throne, born to King James II of England, and actually expressed the hope that the infant prince would die so that the reign of King James II could then be overthrown.

Killed a baby, killed a baby, killed a baby, killed a baby. Probably not true, just a theory. And not one supported by any first hand written accounts. Not that those would exist because if they did, their authors would have been killed if those accounts were discovered, more headlobbin. More recent claim states that rockabye baby was written by Effie Crocket, cousin of the legendary David Crocket. And this claim is really fucking stupid because we know that Rockabuy Baby was first published

in an earlier form, probably in 1765, in England by good old John Newbury and Mother Goose's Melody. It was definitely reprinted and bosted in 1785 and Effie Crockett was not born until 1857. Some historians contend the song was around for more than 200 years before being first published, going back into the 17th century, and that makes Effie Crockett a fucking liar. Effie, Effie Crockett, queen, the nursery rhyme liars. She composed a version of this Niratron in 1886, took credit for the whole damn thing. I got registered as the author of the song, and then now her name is in the credits

of almost 200 movies and TV shows, as the song's author on IMDB. There was a moral to this tale. It's okay to put babies in trees because just like how trees and breaking branches will always be replaced by more trees and branches, the world's never had a baby shortage. So, you know, fuck them.

Or there's a different moral message. And the mother goose's melody, the nursery rhyme is said to serve as a cautionary tale. A footnote to the verse reads, this may serve as a warning to the proud and ambition. Ambitious, I guess, who climbed so high that they generally followed it last. I don't know, John, Newbury,

think you're stretching with that one. No way that baby climbed up that tree. That baby was put there, that baby was murdered. Maybe the cautionary tale should be, don't be helpless like a winey little weak-ass baby because then you've made it pretty easy for someone to kill you. And pretty crazy, that Effie Crockett was able to get her name there. I mean, people at the time just didn't realize that she had plagiarized that song. They thought it was original and it stuck to the stage. She still gets credit and shows and stuff. Let's continue down the timeline. I think we all know this next one, Humpty Dumpty. There is a, there's an Indian Humpty Dumpty video done in Hindi.

Not the nursery rhyme. He shows up in a kid show and it has over 2.7 billion views in the last three years. A nursery rhyme video from seven years ago has 825 million views. Right? There is so much popularity around Humpty still. This version of the nursery rhyme about to play for you fucking sucks. And it still has over 13.5 million views. Dump, Dump, Dump, D-Had to grade boo. All the kings horses and all the kings, And they couldn't put up D together again. That sounds like one person with the Casio keyboard recorded it in one take with no rehearsal. Usually represented by an egg-humpty dump,

Dumpty remains one of the most famous characters in the history of English nursery rhymes. Been a hit for over 200 years. D the answer to the riddle being that Humpty Dumpty was an egg. Seriously, he was never mentioned in the rhyme as being an egg, but we know him as an egg, mainly because he was drawn that way. According to the Oxford English Dictionary in 17th century or in the 17th century, Humpty Dumpty was the name of a kind of brand. He was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who was a man who mentioned in the rhyme has been an egg, but we know him as an egg, mainly because he was drawn that way. According to the Oxford English Dictionary in 17th century or in the 17th

century, Humpty Dumpty was the name of a kind of brandy. Term also used a slang to describe a dull or rotund person. There are several versions of the lyrics. The first printed version goes like this. Humpty Dumpty, set on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fold. Three-school men and three-school moor cannot place Humpty Dumpty, sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fold. Three-school men and three-school more cannot place Humpty Dumpty as he was before. The version we know now is Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, all the King's Horses, and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty together again. Definitely used to say that one a bunch and I was little. I feel like the learn of the bunch of these did help me with memorization.

Also had some questions and concerns about this one. If Humpty was so damn fragile, why was he up on the fuck wall? I'm pretty sure I asked my grandma that. If you're some kind of weird, fragile egg person, stay out of the walls, stay out of trees, you gotta be careful. When you sleep, make sure the mattress is on the floor and surround yourself with guardrails.

There's a lot of situations that can go real wrong if you real quick. Back to the question of Mr. Dumpty being an egg. The lyrics never explicitly say that again, some speculate that instead of Humpty Dumpty being an egg, he was actually a big old cannon, which sat upon a church tower and cold chester. He sat there and tell a barrage of cannonballs destroyed the tower and sent Humpty into the marshland below.

That's how he fell. A lot of people died as a result. When the cannon was finally recovered, they were never able to fix the cannon back up to its former glory never able to get it back up there That origin story makes sense to me pretty cool. I buy it One of the most popular nursery rhymes perhaps most commonly associated with dark origins ring around the Rosie classic Published first in 1881 in England This one is interesting the most famous part at least today goes like this ring around the rosy pocket full of poses, ashes, ashes. We all fall down. I have

a flash memory of singing that verse with the neighbor girl, early friend, Sarah Lawrence. I couldn't have been even in kindergarten yet. We held hands, we spun around, we smiled and laughed and we fell down. The name of the folk song and singing game in the US is ring around the rosy. It's original name is ring. Ring a ring a roses. First published in 1881, believe by folklorist and historians to exist at least a hundred years earlier in some form. There are now some pretty interesting versions of this

little ditty on the web. I like this metal version by Sam Kirschner. Fuck yeah bro, very, very metal. Now to the dark origin claims. Many people think this song is all about the great plague of 1665 and London, the ravage of the city, killing a big chunk of the London's population, which it did. That played killing estimated 100,000 people, almost a quarter of London's population in just 18 months. It puts that kind of carnage in perspective. As I did the research, COVID currently blamed for 742,000 deaths in the US.

If COVID was as untreatable and lethal as the babonic plague back in 1665, it would have killed 82,375,000 by now in this country alone. A quarter of the total population of 329,500,000 would have killed over 111 times the amount it has killed. Think about how many conspiracies we've floating around now. If that many people died, we'd be living in a fucking wasteland. America would have broken off into crazy little dystopian factions by now, be a full on Mad Max life.

According to this plague origin theory, the Rosie represents the red rash, the covered plague victims, while many carry a pocket full of posies to prevent breathing in the smell, right? The evil demon essence of the afflicted, people asked people thought you got the plague by sniffing it. They didn't know what germs were yet. The last line we all fall down, pretty self explanatory, death. Interesting origin story feels plausible, but is it, mmm, maybe?

A lot of people think probably not. It doesn't seem that anyone made that association back in the 19th century when it was actually published. The idea that the song was about to plague only came after the lyrics had been changed in the 20th century, so that's suspicious. Here are the original lyrics, ring around, ring a ring aroses, pocket full of, pocket full of posies, a tissue, a tissue, we all fall down.

The king has sent his daughter to fetch a pale of water, a tissue, a tissue, we all fall down. The king has sent his daughter to fetch a pale of water, a tissue, a tissue, we all fall down. The bird upon the steeple sits high above the people, a tissue, a tissue, we all fall down. The cows are in the meadow, lying fast asleep, a tissue, a tissue, we all get up again. So that sounds like a happy ending. You know, maybe at least the end of a pandemic. I don't know why was it changed to we all fall down maybe just to make it a fun kids game where you literally fall down. And man, so much easier to fall is a little kid by the

way. Like I used to love falling down right now fall down game. Fucking suck. I would refuse to play. I'm not gonna fall in the damn ground. Are you kidding me? That's my backup my needs. Am I not get up for a while? The orange is a song not fully understood. The plague feels possible, but not likely a tissue. It seems to be in for obviously sneezing. And while the plague, you know, did have symptoms like nausea, vomiting, and fever, it wasn't really known for sneezing. Not a signature sign of the disease. It wasn't primarily spread through airborne transmission. Although pneumonic plague and airborne version did exist, it developed some people in the outbreak, but primarily by far spread through the bites of fleas carried around mainly by rats, fleas carrying that bacterium, you know, oh boy, you're, you're senior pestists.

Another rhyme with a possible dark backstory, a little Miss Muffet. At the very least, this is a weird ass nursery rhyme. I remember thinking it was super weird as a kid. Little Miss Muffet, At the very least, this is a weird ass. Nursery, I remember everything. It was super weird as a kid. Little Miss Muffet, she sat on her tuffet, eating her curds in way, along came a spider who sat down beside her and frightened Miss Muffet away. There's a legend Little Miss Muffet was inspired by a real life girl and her weird stepfather, Dr. Thomas Muffet, a notorious physician and entomologist from the 16th century. And the real Dr. Muffet did study spiders amongst many other things. He was the author of a scientific illustrated guide about insects

and the legend is that he apparently fed mashed-up spiders to a step-daughter in her curge-in-way for some unknown reason, highly unlikely. Much more likely that people who were afraid of spiders just thought he was a fucking weirdo for studying him, for studying spiders when people didn't do shit like that. And they made up a clever little rhyme about what life must have been like for his step daughter. And then there is Peter Peter pumpkin eater.

Uh, I don't know if you know this at the time that was written pumpkin was the slang for female genitalia for pussy. Keep that in mind when you hear these lyrics, changes it a bit. Peter Peter pumpkin eater. How do I put cooking couldn't keep her? You put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well. Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, had another and didn't love her.

Peter learned to read and spell, and then he loved her very well. So following the meaning of pumpkin when this came out, first published in 1825, Peter liked to go down in the ladies as wife got mad. So he put her inside someone else's vagina. And then he kept going back down another ladies and he went back to school and he got a good degree and a better job and he took his wife out of that vagina

that she was trapped in and they lived, you know, they happily ever after. Pretty straightforward. No tricky symbolism or hidden meanings. Of course that's crazy talk. Pumpkin was not slang for pussy. That rhyme might actually be a dark one. Some historians believe that Peter the pumpkin

either got tired of his wife cheating on him so he fucking killed her Any hitter body, you know, chopped everybody and hit the reins in a pumpkin. I don't know I don't necessarily see that but that's uh That's what many people who have studied this stuff far more in depth than I have say Okay, we've looked at a lot of hits now The majority of the main claims about the dark history of nursery rhymes in the English language While there doesn't seem to be as much darkness in these as some think there is there certainly is some. Now, let's jump out of the timeline.

Take a look at a few nursery rhymes from other cultures. Mostly just Russia. Oh boy, my favorite part of this episode. And find out how dark or not they may be. Good job, soldier. You made it back. Barely. Fucking Russia. Fight to pick one country. Outside of the US, to consistently research, it's got to be Russia.

I find so many stories there, darkly hilarious. It's just so grim and nihilistic and various points in its history. To be fair to Russia here, the nursery rhymes I've picked to read first come from Ben Rosenfield, son of a of Jewish Russian immigrants. And he is a comedian, not historian. Also took a bunch of traditional Russian nursery rhymes, translated them into English with a company artwork, a very funny book called, I think, Russian optimism dark nursery rhymes to cheer you right up. Some Russian readers in the comments section, the book do say that some of the within context is lost in translation, but even if they're distorted after finding these, I could not not share them with you.

I hope you find them as amusing as I do. Allow me to read several in a shitty Russian accent over some stereotypical old-timey Russian music. This first one is called Brighter Side. In my childhood, my mom gouged out my eyes so that I wouldn't find the jam. Now I don't watch movies and don't read fairy tales, but on the bright side, I smell and hear very well. I hope you like that rhyme.

Here another one, called Diggin' A Hole. A little boy was digging a hole in the ground. Suddenly he shoveled his metal. His arms are on the pine tree. His bow's on the oak tree. You should be more careful playing with landmines. Not too dark, maybe, just life in Russia. Next one, pretty light and funny.

It called Mom's bedroom. From Mom's bedroom, a crooked-legged cripple emerged. It was dad. I walked the same way, our gene pool is bad. This next did he call the old lawnmower. An old man who's caught in lawn, is blade caught a pair of lovers. The red blood covered the grass. Don't fucking the morning.

It's more poetic and kid-friendly in Russia. Three more. Here one called Mom's Gifts. Mom gave her kids some gifts. Peter got axe. Sergei got metal pick. Me and she got crowbar. Vase got knife.

Their drunk neighbor doesn't bother them anymore. You have to be strong in Russia to survive. This one called cherries. The kids stole some cherries from yard. Grama very happy. Thankfully she called it the trees with poison. The village will have a lot of memorial services. Do you get it?

Because all the kids died and that's for stealing the chair and eating with the poison. Last one is my favorite. This one called the Rassler. What is big deal? I make you squeal. Arassulio. Arassulio. What is big deal? It limped for real. Arassulio. Arassulio. What is big deal? I do bet the stabbing, stop blabbing. I just rassle you, vice jakedino. And that is what I do. Go to sleep now, stupid baby russian person. It's the last one little bit dark, maybe not real.

Uh, okay. Maybe I made it the last one. I don't know, it's hard to say. Did Ben make up the previous ones, maybe. But if he did, he also got a bunch of online reviewers to vouch for their authenticity. I hope they're real. I hope some version of them is real and I hope they're super old. Here's a traditional Russian nursery rhyme. Lullaby, not from that collection. This one is pretty well known. You can find a lot of videos of it.

First published in 1811 is called Bayu, Bayu Shkibayu, aka the Russian Wolf Lullaby. Sleep, sleep, sleep. Don't lie too close to the edge of the bed. Or little gray wolf will come and grab you by the flank, drag you into the woods underneath the willow root. Hey! So probably rhymes, you know, in Russian, comes across pretty fucked up. Go, comes across pretty brutal lullaby there. Just go to sleep, go to sleep,

or scary wolf come bite you on back. Think Fang Deep, make you weep, drag you screaming Drag your screaming so much blood Laying hip Laying hip and die in cold wolf then Is there a moral of the story? I don't know maybe I can't find it Original meaning I think it just might be that you know you got to keep an eye out for hungry wolves and you're never safe Russia what's the country? Russia isn't the only other country with some interesting bedtime stories. Check out this sweet Portuguese nursery rhyme from Brazil called Nana Nene, not showing it was first printed, but it seems you've been around for a long time and invokes the

Cucca, a crocodile hagg monster thing from local legends. The story seems to focus on the idea that parents are not able to protect their kids. It's very comforting. Features in Ox Monster, a boogie man called Beach O'Papaya, who looks around on the roof. And translation here is Hush Little Baby. Hush Little Baby. I'm not making this up. Hush Little Baby, Kukka is coming to get you. Papa went to the fields. Mama went to work. Black-faced ox come grab this child who is scared of grimaces. Boogie Man, get off the roof. Let this child sleep peacefully. Who the fuck is singing that? Kid. And then there is Dormerte Niño, Lola Baisong in Spain, various Latin American

countries, several different versions. Again, not sure when it first came around. Seems to be pretty old. Warned kids that if you don't go to fucking sleep, a shapeshifting monster called the cucko will eat you. So listen to your parents. The English translation, the most of the most known version is sleep little one, sleep already, or the cocoa will come and take you away. Sleep little one, sleep already, or the cocoa will come and eat you up, right? Go to sleep, or a fucking monster is's gonna find you and eat your little dumb ass. I'm hating they have a similar song, but the monster there is a big crab and an Iceland. It's so much weird folklore in Iceland, maybe the king of weird folklore. Unnamed classic

from at least as far back as 1936 apparently translates into sleep, you black-eyed pig. Fallen. That's what killed me. It's so dumb. Sleep, you black-eyed pig. fallen to, this would kill me. It's so dumb. Sleepy black-eyed pig, fall into a deep pit of ghosts. What the fuck? I love the line, fall into a deep pit of ghosts. You don't go to bed, you're gonna fall into a ghost pit. The hell's going on over there? Where the hell's going on everywhere with these rhymes?

Let's recap. How dark was the dark history of nursery rhymes? Was it as fucked up as you thought it would be? Did we skip sound to you? You know, it's not where darker. Maybe there's a lot of them out there. These ones were darker in many ways than I expected, but also nursery rhymes more helpful than I realized when it comes to how we begin to learn language. I was amazed by how many of these I had not thought about in years, and yet I still remember the words and melodies that coos to encoding language. I was amazed by how many of these I had not thought about in years, and yet I still remember the words and melodies that coos to encoding works.

I mean, it like time traveled me. Here in some of these, I was back in Riggins, I was sitting on my grandparents' backyard, playing patty cake, patty cake with grandma Betty. You know, sitting on my great grandma of Stels, you know, living room floor, you know, singing some of these nursery rhymes with her. It's pretty cool that connection to our past. They have a lot of value, you know, these things.

I hope we don't get rid of them. Such a cool link to the past. If I have grandkids someday, I like that I, you know, I'll know more about nursery rhymes and I'll read them to them now. I'll probably skip the Russian ones. But I probably will still read them some some of the dark ones. They went over today to make myself chuckle, and I will feel okay laughing about that thanks to understanding the comedic theory of benign violation.

Time now for today's Top 5 Takeaways. Number one, of course, a lot of famous nursery rhymes are dark. They were written in dark times and reflect the dark thoughts to those times. Life of the average peasant in medieval England was fucking terrible. In average peasants, you know, probably the people who first started singing those little diddies, they're the little babies. Number two, most of the authors of these nursery rhymes are unknown. Collections such as Mother Goose represent several authors coming up with rhymes over decades

of not centuries that were passed around via an oral tradition. Number three, reading nursery rhymes to your kids despite a lot of weird details and themes and sometimes dark origins is still very good for them. Helps develop all sorts of cognitive skills and educators believe it'll make them better readers, writers, and thinkers later on, so read those nursery rhymes. Number four, I'll just fuck what's going on in Russia

with those especially horrific nursery rhymes. How much has been lost in translation and how much is actually that bet? Number five, new info, close out our expedition through the Dark History of nursery rhymes. Let's check out a stand up comic who ended up becoming the first comic to ever sell out Madison Square Garden in New York City, two nights in a row, thanks largely to old nursery rhymes. A lot of the ones we went over today, His profane parodies of nursery rhymes became his signature bits. Possibly the first stand I ever heard when one of his tapes got passed around, not as in grade school, Andrew dice clay. Real name, Andrew clay,

silverstein, huge in the 80s, peak to 1990 when he sold out those medicines, where garden shows. Let me share some of his rhymes, starting with the parody of Jack and Jill. shows. Let me share some of his rhymes starting with the parody of Jack and Jill. Jack and Jill went up the hill to have some hanky panky. Silly Jill forgot a pill and now there's little Frankie. There's a twist on Mary head a little lamb. Mary had a little lamb, but father shot at dead. Now it goes to school with her between two chunks of bread. Oh, there's a fun one about pies. Simple Simon met a pymin, going to the fair, said simple Simon to the pymin would have you got there. Said the pymin onto Simon pies, you dickhead.

Oh, oh, oh, two more. Old mother hobbit went to the cupboard to fetch a poor doggy of bone. When she bent over, Rover took over and gave her a bone of his own. Hey, I may have memorized that one. So we're around six grade. Last one, very, very short one. Little boy blue. Hey, he needed the money. None of those jokes would have ever worked. If his large audience didn't have the original rhymes memorized. Which they did, thanks to the acoustic encoding. You know, they had a memorized from childhood pretty thoroughly

and immediately understood how he violated the expected pattern when he parriedied them. That benign violation, you know, comedy theory. We talked about earlier, worked like a champ. Time, shock,. Top five takeaways. Doc, history of those two rhymes has been sucked. Oh, I hope you enjoyed that learning as much as I did. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for all the help and making time suck every week.

Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsey Cummins, Reverend Dr. Joe Paisley. Thanks to Zach Flannery, the script keeper. Once again, tacked on the initial research this week. Thanks to Bitlixer for keeping the time suck app running smooth, login, the art warlock Keith, our creative director, creating all the Merch at Badmagic Merch.com and more. Thanks to Liz, the Enchantress Hernandez running the Colt of the Curious to our current Colt of the Curious Facebook page, private page, along with her wonderful all-seeing eyes moderators and she helps login with socials as well.

Thanks to Beefstake and the mod squad, keeping 10,000 meat sacks happy over on Discord. And our spacers chose this week's topic. I'm choosing next week's and once again, we are going to go cult, cult, cult for the first time in a cold episode. We're heading to Japan talking about the om shinrikyo or Supreme Truth Doomsday cult led by Shoko Asshara, nearly blind or Asahara, excuse me, Shoko Asahara, nearly blind acupuncturist, former schoolyard bully nicknamed the Japanese Charles Manson. Om started in the 1980s as a harmless empowering spiritual group. The offense started off so harmless. Shoko Asahara combined Hinduism,

Buddhism, elements of Christian apocalyptic, combined Hinduism, Buddhism, elements of Christian apocalyptic prophecies into a new age spiritual enlightenment focused religion. Asahara claimed to be both Christ and the first in light and once since Buddha walked the earth. Fuck yeah, Jesus Buddha, if you're gonna be a cult leader, always fun to go real big. Why stop at one deity?

Combo that shit, right? Add some Buddha Christ to your Christburger. Asahara gained a global following Spoke universe, G's Add some Buddha-friars to your Christburger. Osterhar gained a global following, Spoke University's wrote numerous books at the peak of the cult's power. Om had close to 50,000 members worldwide, and then eventually, as cult leaders are want to do, he shifted away from spiritual empowerment,

and more towards the world is ending soon. Come with me if you want to live. He predicted that the US was gonna start World War III with Japan, bringing about the end of civilization and the older survivors would of course be on members Unlike a lot of cult leaders. He was not content to sit around and wait for the apocalypse He decided to help kick it off He ordered his followers to launch biological and chemical warfare attacks on major cities in Japan

They're most devastating attack occurred on March 20th 1995 when they planted Seren gas and Tokyo subways killed 13 people injured thousands, not their only attack, on preached violence, ordered anyone who opposed him to be destroyed. How does his story end? Well, World War Three is still not upon us, so he didn't get what he wanted. To find out what he did get, you had to listen next week. Right now, we got Time Sucker updates. Updates, get your time sucker updates. First update, Super Sucker, an accent expert, Steven Georgie.

Somehow not blown away. Why my French impressions in the Dr. Satan Sucker last week? He writes, this is gonna be a short message of a day and I just wanted to say I love how every time you try to pull off an Italian accent or French accent, it turns into Mario. I love it, bro. It's Leris. Well, thank you, Stephen. I'm glad you and the overwhelming majority of time suckers do not listen weekly for accurate ethnic impressions. And you just have fun with a lot of my nonsense. I like a, I like a, I like a module. I like

a module. Now I may have recently gotten a military meet sack, dishonorably discharged. Almost, luckily I didn't. Jeremy last name redacted explains, let me just start off with saying, fuck you Dan. I got comments a lot. Yesterday I was working at my job, which is in the military, while listening to your podcast and my earbuds.

I was listening to the dolphin sex suck when you started going into the tale about dolphin dicks. At that specific moment, a full bird kernel comes walking up, starts talking to me. Now, we're not technically supposed to wear earbuds while we work in the military, so I took them out as a sign of respect when the podcast starts playing on my phone now,

played for approximately 10 seconds, 10 seconds of pure, complete utter torture as you explain the size of dolphin dicks. I've never seen an officer walk away so fast. Anyway, sorry for the long message. Love the podcast. Love the topics. Oh, and your voice is only voice I can stand on the podcast by the way. So you have a time sucker for life. PS, if you read this on the show, can you leave my last name out? Yeah, last name, redacted Jeremy. So glad you did not get in trouble. Also, also glad you like my voice. I can't

handle hearing it myself. It's always it's always far less manly when I listen, I'm glad you liked my voice. I can't handle hearing it myself. It's always far less manly when I listen like, ah, that's how it sounds son of a bitch. And I always think, man, my mouth really is mushy, okay. That's a hilarious 10 second for somebody here on context. Guessing that officer still thinks about that from time to time. I worry about our future, Amy, Dolphin Dix. One of the guys was listening to learning about Dolphin Dix

when he's supposed to be upgrading our computers. What kind of world is it anymore? What kind of, what's the world coming to when all people care about us, dolphin dicks? Quick Oregon Trail update from Funny Sucker Brian Hood. Ryan writes, Dear Dan, thanks to your last suck, we have rediscovered the Oregon Trail game. My son has had cholera, a broken arm, leg, lost food to thieves, and dumped his wagon in the drink and still lived.

He's like the John Wic of the Oregon Trail Thanks for the good times pride. Do that John Wic reference killed me so good. I love those movies by the way I'm so glad you have an indestructible son Also got some new Michael mother fucking McDonald info It's getting harder and harder to learn something new about the guy since I've already looked into this so much, but meet sack musical historian Brian McBicker, just blew my mind. He wrote, dear triple M worshipper master of the suck spoon launching marauder, etc. I expect you might know this.

I didn't, but in case you don't, triple M apparently worked on the van Halen album 1984. What the fuck? Pretty cool. I expect you'll talk about this on time, so at some point, times like rocks, keep it up, master. Brian did not know this Brian. Yeah, I found out thanks to you. Thanks for the link.

You sent the video. I listened to it. Yeah, David Lee Roth got a hold of Michael McDonald. He was having some songwriting problems, working on 1984. They brought in Michael McDonald to help write, I'll wait. And then McDonald helped write some of the verses and he wrote the chorus and then Van Halen tried to cut triple M out of the songwriting credit.

He got pissed, you know, talk to some people, uh, some management. And then while he was not initially credited, he was credited later and he's, you know, made sure to get all his royalties. You don't fuck with triple M. It doesn't take it. Uh, let me play some of that chorus. This is, this is triple M's words sung by David Lee Roth in Van Halen. I wait till the drums down. I'll come in straight up your heart. No way if it's not me now. It's fine as you are.

Ah, that's a great album, by the way. I mean, that is a great AZL. Very cool, triple M trivia, Brian. Thank you. And let's end on more levity. Super sucking Sarah from Mississippi. Probably has to move now. Or like she's like, she'll just talk about,

she has to wait a long time for new neighbors to move in because she's ruined her relationship, possibly with a lot of her neighbors. Said for her funny for us, she writes, Hey Dan, I wanted to write in and let you know how much you just fucked up our luck with all our new neighbors. To preface the housing market, it's hit our neighborhood pretty good, lots of zero,

lot homes close together with lots of brand new neighbors. We haven't met yet, lots of little kids, lots. And to make a clear understanding of how they are grouped together, there was a long, treeless valley of backyards lining up together with more houses and their backyards directly adjacent, ours being right in the center. So last week and I told my husband, all about the Princess Diana episode into my surprise he, who was not under podcast, asked me to listen again, so he could too.

So we settled on our patio at dusk with drinks and hand, getting ready for a sucky evening. We decided to spike up a fire and our little fireball midway to the episode, that's fun. I picked up my phone and patio chair at the same time to move closer to the fire, without my consent, my palm turned the volume up full blast on our patio speaker right during a whipple sponsor break. Fuck your families! Rings out across our backyard.

And neighborhood so loudly it rumbled the ground beneath our feet. The once chatty neighborhood of kids out jumping on trampolines and playing driveway basketball fell silent, literally crickets. So yeah, thanks. We laughed about it, tried to make ourselves feel better, but we both know in the pit of our stomachs, we'll have to wait until the next wave of new neighbors comes through. If your content discovered it last year through scared to death, it has gotten me through some long shifts that work. Keep up to good work. Can't wait for Monday sucker like the rest Cummins Law inductee down Mississippi Picture in the scenario you just grab me some laughs so hard Sarah Thank you for sharing your trauma

Again, it's so hard to explain Cummins Law situations always funny. What is not you? Enjoy your week everyone. Hail Nimrod to you all Thank you for listening to this bad magic production podcast, Meat Sex. Maybe put more thought into what bedtime diddies. Sing it to your babies or don't. Just have fun. Sing them with a sinister smile. I mean, they're too dumb to figure out what you're really saying anyway. FUCKING BABYS, Am I right?

OOOOOH! Keep on sucking! TURN Unmagic productions Hmm, come up with one of my own maybe something related to the sucked engine Hmm Hickory dickory dock Joe's still on the clock, but he's not at his desk with all of the rest He's in the bathroom again touching his cock

Ha Dude hey I drink a bunch of water you know that it's for my head It's not just like in touch my cock I do that too, but it's not just about that. He doesn't get headaches if he gets thirsty. Still good rhyme.